


From the Ashes

by pancakezrule



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, American Sign Language, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Friend Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Car Accidents, Deaf Stiles Stilinski, Emotionally Hurt Stiles Stilinski, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Good Peter, Heavy Angst, High School Student Stiles Stilinski, Human Derek Hale, Hurt/Comfort, Interpreter Derek, M/M, Nightmares, No Smut, POV Multiple, POV Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), POV Stiles Stilinski, Panic Attacks, Protective Derek, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Slow Build, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, Teacher Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-09-30 08:14:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17220239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pancakezrule/pseuds/pancakezrule
Summary: The Jeep was found at the bottom of the ravine. It was nothing more than a burnt out shell.Or the one where Stiles is deaf after a car accident, Derek is his interpreter/teacher, and Scott is a shitty best friend.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of you probably remember this fic as being crappy and half-assed back in 2016. Welcome to part two, where I dragged it out of Microsoft Word and beat it into submission. 
> 
> A little help for the reader: Scott's POV is in the past tense, and is happening (you guessed it) in the past. Stiles' POV is in the present tense and is happening, like, currently. The tiny little dashes break up the same POV into different segments. The big lines signal a shift in POV from Stiles to Scott (and, like, once really far out in the story, Derek). 
> 
> As always, comments and suggestions are welcomed and appreaciated. Much love.

She told Scott as he leaned over the open dishwasher, the cloud of steam dripping commas and empty explanations.

It took a few sentences. Five. Six. He doesn’t remember much, he tries not to, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the brain to stop listening before it’s too late.

    _...the jeep was found at the bottom of the ravine… a burnt out shell…_

She spoke around the cranberry muffin, trying to cram it all in before she headed back to the hospital. Scott nodded like he was listening, like it was an ordinary conversation about the weather or school. His mom didn't know the difference, or at least she didn’t comment on it.

“I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else." She said slowly, eying her son over her breakfast. "Scott, you should really come visit him sometime, he’d like that a lot.” Muffin crumbs dribbled past her lips as she finished, taking a quick swig from her coffee cup and sliding her arms into her white jacket.

Scott looked back at the dishes in the dishwater. He wished he could crawl inside and disappear in a bowl. His mom could scrape him out later and rinse him down the sink like some spaghetti sauce that didn’t quite get cleaned out.

“I’m fine.” He told her, dragging out a clear plastic tub, drying the inside with the dishrag. Scott took his time loading the rest of the muffins inside and snapping the Tupperware lid on top.

She sighed softly, the words of protest died on her tongue. There was a quick press of lips to his cheek, and a quiet whisper in his ear. “At least try, Scott.”

    _...the jeep was found at the bottom of the ravine..._

  

* * *

 

 

Stiles fell asleep hoping the world would be different when he woke up, but when he opens his eyes, the world is the same.

He’s still in his bedroom, his alarm clock still hasn’t been set for daylight savings, and the early sky's still the color of vomit.

Any other spring, this kind of sunrise would be beautiful. He would be content to lay there all morning, sprawled out on his bedsheets, watching the sky change colors.

But that morning, for all he cares, the sun could have burnt the orange hues right out of the air. The sky could be as miserable as he is, because nothing had been beautiful since the world turned to shit.

Or, more rather, since Stiles’ world turned to shit.

It wasn’t his fault. He tells himself that over and over, just as the nurses at the hospital told his father when it happened. It wasn’t his fault. The roads were slick from the rain. It always rains in the winter. No one could have predicted it.

Stiles shuts the curtains with a jerk, bathing his bedroom in a muted sort of darkness. A tiny stream of light streaks across the floor, a quickly fading reminder of what could have been. He pulls the curtains closed further, letting out a strangled noise of distress as he chokes out the rest of the light, along with the memory.

He doesn't need Scott. He is going to go to school and meet a whole bunch of new people and everything would be okay. There are two middle schools in the small town of Beacon Hills, California, and only one high school. Which meant this year there would be a whole _two_ groups of freshman, _plus_ the sophomores he hadn’t already made a fool of himself to. The juniors were mostly out of the question, since a handful were his ~~friends-enemies-~~ former acquaintances, and the rest thought he was just insane-

Baby steps, he reminds himself. Baby steps.

By the time Stiles rouses himself from the warm confinement of his bed and pulls on a clean hoodie and pair of jeans, his dad is already busy in the kitchen. Stiles takes his time going down the stairs, savoring the greasy smell of bacon and sausage on the griddle.

He knows, deep down, that his dad shouldn’t be eating this much fatty food for breakfast. One strip of bacon is pushing it with his cholesterol, not to mention _sausage_ too, but somehow, Stiles can’t find it in himself to reprimand his dad today. They’ve both been through so much, and as his dad always says, he’s gotta learn to pick his fights.

And if Stiles wants to pick _all_ of them, well...

He clears his throat as he steps into the kitchen. His dad nearly drops the spatula he’s holding as he whirls around, a tired—yet excited—smile plastered on his face.

John raises his hand, and Stiles watches, amused, as he makes a little talking-mouth sign by his temple, then cradles his arms as if he’s holding a baby.

 _‘Son.’_  

One of the few signs his dad could remember.

Stiles smiles in response and nods his head. He waves at his dad as he shoulders past him, eying the sizzling bacon and sausage on the griddle. There’s a plate with a half-eaten strawberry Pop-Tart beside the stove and smudged, greasy fingerprints along the rim. Stiles pretends not to notice the fingerprints—pretends not to know his dad’s been sneaking fatty breakfast meats—and grabs an already-cooked slice of bacon for himself.

When Stiles turns back around, his dad is prying open a tray of sugar cookies with a butter knife. He is talking. Stiles can see the slight movement of his head and how his breathing is different, but he can't hear a word that is being said.

Stiles clears his throat again and crosses his arms over his chest, holding his elbows.

John turns around slowly, his eyes wide and apologetic. He starts speaking again, slower, so Stiles can try to read his lips. _...Pa.. E? A flick of the tongue, that's a t. Pet.. Peter. Dr. Hale._ Oh hell no.

Stiles shakes his head in a rush, turning his back on his father. That explains the cookies, his dad always likes to make a good impression whenever Dr. Hale comes over. He will probably crumble the cookies a little and put them on a tray like he was a good dad who baked cookies for his son in the morning instead of one who bought a whole bunch of at once and pulled them out on special occasions. He must feel the need to stock up on _Good Dad_ points whenever he can, since-

Nope. Not now. He has a list, and number one is school, not sitting in the kitchen with some shrink his dad’s job provided.

Stiles walks slowly to the cabinet over the sink, opening it and staring at the glasses arranged neatly inside. He clenches his fists at his side, watching the glasses tremble as his father walks around behind him. They’re screaming, Stiles is sure, if only he could hear them. He could help them. But he can't, and if he touches them, they’ll shatter and ruin his father’s Good Dad point opportunity.

There’s a hand on his shoulder. He shakes it off. He doesn’t need to see Dr. Hale. He has an appointment in a week, and he’ll go then like he’s supposed to. Not today. Not his first day of junior year.

Stiles shuts the cabinet, leaving the screaming glasses on their own. He doesn’t look at his dad as he grabs his backpack from the kitchen table, the worn material rough in his hands as he slides it over his shoulders. He turns around slowly, his gaze sliding around the room.

There are grease stains on the linoleum, clouds of anger in the air, and angry words piling in the cracks in the wall. We are trained not to see any of it, but when the world takes away your ears, they also rip off your eyelids.

His dad is talking again, the sound bouncing uselessly around the room before dissolving into the air. Stiles stands still, watching him snap the lid off the cookies and begin arranging them on a paper plate. A nice touch, Stiles thinks. Not the usual tray on the stove this time.

After a few moments, John turns to face him again. He opens his mouth. Hesitates. He puffs out a sour breath across the still kitchen and slowly lifts his hand. He furrows his brows as he concentrates, trying to move his fingers in the right shape. It takes him a little longer than Stiles would have liked, but eventually, he manages to hold up the correct sign.

Thumb out. Pointer finger up. Middle and ring finger curled down. Pinky up. _‘I love you’._

Stiles flashes the same sign in response before he heads out the door. At least his dad is trying. That’s all Stiles can really ask for at this point.

Stiles walks down the driveway, shooting a glance towards the empty space where his Jeep should be. There's a pang of guilt in his chest, right beneath his heart. It blooms out, rippling like waves, threatening to wash over him and drag him into the depths.

It was his mother’s Jeep, back when they were a whole family. Stiles can remember her laughter, and the way the wind would blow their hair back as she drove around town—

He shakes his head suddenly, his teeth clenching in anger as he adjusts the backpack on his shoulders. Stiles ducks his head down, averting his gaze from the vacant space on the driveway.

The pavement rumbles beneath him, the vibrations making their way up through the soles of his sneakers. Stiles doesn't look up at the cars passing by him, doesn't worry about the ground shaking. He's gotten used to it. Dr. Hale says when you lose one of your senses, the others become more heightened.

Stiles thinks that’s a load of crap. When you lose one of your senses, you aren’t magically granted super-senses, you just become more aware of the remaining four because you’re down one. But he doesn’t ever tell Dr. Hale that. At least, not to his face.

The school bus wheezes to his corner. The door opens and he steps up, standing in the aisle as the driver pulls away from the curb. Stiles grips at the straps of his backpack as he glances around the half-empty bus.

He doesn’t know where to sit.

Stiles never was a backseat kid, if he sits in the middle a stranger could sit next to him and try to get him to speak, and if he sits in the front it will make him look like a little kid. But he figures that’s his best chance to make eye contact with someone who he’s spoken to before, if any of them aren’t driving themselves to school this year. They’ll probably be the best to sit next to, since they’ll have heard by now about The Accident.

Students get picked up in groups. As they walk down the aisle, people who were part of Stiles’ group of ~~friends enemies~~ _old acquaintances_ give him these sidelong glances. He closes his eyes. This is what he’s been dreading.

Stiles is the only one sitting alone as they leave the last stop and head to the school.

He can feel the clanking of the engine as the bus rolls along. If he rests his head against the window, there's a possibility of getting a small concussion from the vibrations. But at least that way he doesn’t feel so alone. He shifts in his seat, using his pack as a backrest as he leans himself against the window, his legs sprawled out along the fake leather bus seat.

The girl across the aisle is wearing too much perfume. The boy sitting next to her tries to open his window, but the little latch locks won’t budge. They're all doomed to smother in the overpowering fruity stench. Stiles tugs his shirt up over his nose, trying to filter out the smell.

They pass the sign in front of the high school— _Beacon Hills High Welcomes You!_ Stiles snorts and rolls his eyes. On the steps of the school there is a group of kids tossing a baseball back and forth. Baseball Jocks—a subsection of a clan. The entire school is divided into clans: Jocks, Richies, Cheerleaders, Human Garbage, Suffering Artists, Thespians, Goths, etcetera. And each clan has a subsection, like the Jocks have the lacrosse players, basketball players, baseball, and so on.

Stiles? Stiles is now clanless. He and Scott used to be on the outskirts of the lacrosse subsection, but the coach graciously asked Stiles to leave the team since his accident—

Stiles bites his lip. He is not going to think about it. It was ugly, and totally ruined his life, but it’s over. It happened. It’s done. And he’s not going to think about it. His lip bleeds a little and it tastes like metal, jolting Stiles out of his thoughts.

The boy stays in his seat, waiting until everyone else has moved down the aisle. Then he stands slowly, tugging his hood up over his head. The bus driver shoots him _The Look_ ; a soft face, the corners of the lips tilted down, eyebrows furrowed. Stiles has gotten _The Look_ since his mother passed away, but lately, it's gotten worse.

With his head down Stiles makes his way up the front steps, avoiding everyone in his path. At least he can't hear anyone if they tried to call for him.

He wanders down the hallway, keeping his head tucked until he reaches his locker. Stiles opens it carefully, trying not to make too much noise. It’s not like he can help it, anyway, he can’t hear if his footsteps are too clunky or if he’s slamming his notebooks down in his locker. He grunts past the lump in his throat, reminding himself not to think too much about what he can’t control.

That’s what Dr. Hale always tells him.

Sometimes, Stiles thinks, Dr. Hale isn’t always full of shit.

**____**

 

In his first class, Stiles meets the _wonderful_ woman the school supplied as his interpreter. Sarcasm noted.

She is all flailing hands and nervous glances around the room, and she never makes eye contact with Stiles. He’s pretty sure he missed half the lecture in social studies, and she didn’t even bother signing anything useful during calculus. As Stiles heads towards the cafeteria for lunch, he’s pretty sure his day can’t get any worse, but apparently, the Lunch Gods have it out for him.

Behind the wall of deli windows is brownish turkey with mashed potatoes, some sort of broccoli mixture, and a pile of brownies. It makes his stomach roll, but Stiles isn’t sure how to order anything else, although he does know how to fingerspell pizza.

P - I - double Z - A. Easy peasy.

But Stiles isn’t positive if the interpreter is an actual interpreter, so he takes his tray along and lets the lunch ladies fill it up. They flash him sad little looks, and the one at the end gives him an extra brownie.

He dumps the pity brownie in the trash as he exits the line.

Stiles sees a few friends—people he used to consider friends—but they don’t see him. Or at least, they pretend not to see him. Think fast, think fast. Stiles eyes the interpreter behind him, groaning internally and rolling his eyes at how pathetic he must look.

He turns to ditch his tray and hide in the library when someone grabs his arm. Two green eyes smile up at him as he’s dragged through the cafeteria, and holy shit, he’s being personally escorted by Lydia Martin. Escorted, as in moving, not escorted as in, you know, an _escort_ -escort, though, Stiles thinks, there’s nothing wrong with that kind of profession—

Stiles is abruptly shoved at a table, nearly falling down in the process.

Lydia sits across from him, lips moving quickly as she resumes talking to the girl sitting next to her. She’s new. A freshman? Stiles doesn’t recognize her, but she doesn’t look anything like a freshman.

He starts eating his turkey flavored whatever. It’s totally not meat, but hey, it’s edible. Stiles tries to ignore the interpreter standing behind him as he eats, watching Lydia’s mouth move as he tries to catch a few of her words. He sees his own name there a couple times, and a couple J’s. The way the new girl’s face falls must mean she’s hearing about The Accident.

Stiles grunts softly and stabs at the turkey mush with his fork. Maybe if he stabs hard enough, he’ll be able to alter the tilt of the earth and turn back time. Or maybe, the Lunch Gods will have pity on him and let Stiles eat in peace, but luck (and the Lunch Gods) are never on his side. So Stiles takes a deep breath and lift his head, preparing himself for the soft look he always gets when people hear the news.

Instead, once she’s sure Stiles is paying attention, the girl lifts a hand and slowly moves her fingers around, letting Stiles read the word she’s spelling out.

K-I-R-A. ‘ _Kira_.’

Stiles nods excitedly and pushes his tray away, forgetting his soggy lunch as he lifts his hand and shows her the back of it, fingers spread out in a five-shape. He moves his other palm around the fingers in a jerky motion, not really sure how Dr. Hale did it the other day, eyebrows furrowed before he signs _school._

_‘What grade are you?’_

Kira’s face lights up in a smile as she reaches forward, fixing Stiles’ mistake before tapping his pointer finger.

_‘Junior.’_

So Stiles was right. Not a freshman. Lydia flicks her wrist, capturing Stiles’ attention as he focuses on her hands. It takes him a while to realize she’s not signing, just talking with her hands, and Stiles is a little disappointed when he realizes he’s being left out of the conversation again. The idiot interpreter behind him doesn’t offer to help out, and Stiles isn’t sure she’d be much help anyway, so he focuses on Lydia’s mouth as she talks.

And, boy, if he was ever going to pop a boner over Lydia’s perfectly-shaped lips, this would _totally_ be the time, but his dick and his brain are on two different paths.

Lydia tells Kira something about the beach, Stiles thinks, because of course, he can keep up with the conversation all by himself.

Briefly, he wonders what Scott will think when he sees Stiles with _the_ Lydia Martin, _and_ the new girl. His eyes flicker to the lacrosse table and he sees Scott sitting amongst the group. Stiles puffs out his chest a little, almost daring Scott to look over and see him sitting there with other people instead of hiding away in the library by himself.

The thought is quickly shooed away when the interpreter taps his shoulder. Stiles blinks a few times, watching as Lydia and Kira grab their trays and wait for Stiles to leave with them.

Lunch is over. Three periods down, four to go.

* * *

 

 

Saturdays were the worst. When Stiles was a real boy, and he and Scott were best friends with sleepovers and jokes and laughter, Saturdays were cold pizza eaten while watching cartoons. At Stiles’ house they’d eat waffles that were made with that fake corn syrup maple stuff drizzled on top while his dad scolded the two of them for making such a mess. He didn’t really mind, Scott knew that, and after they cleaned they’d read comic books-

No. He couldn’t think of that. Scott couldn’t pollute his insides with _couldbe-was-have-been_. He was good. He was strong.

The trip from the car to the front doors of the hospital took longer than usual. Scott’s mom was behind the desk. White walls. Blue chairs. Tired people, anxiously waiting for the news of their _aunt-sister-daughter._

Melissa made eye contact with Scott. He pretended not to notice. Scott slumped down in a chair full of lost hope and broken dreams. Maybe, he thought, if he sat there long enough, it would absorb him too.

    _...the jeep was found at the bottom of the ravine… a burnt out shell…_

Stiles had called him three times that night. Scott didn’t pick up.

He didn’t listen to the messages after. He was too angry.

    _… jeep was found…_

What was Stiles doing out that late? What was he thinking? There’s no point in asking why, even though everyone will. They’ll ask Scott, and he’ll pretend not to know. But Scott knows why. He does.

Melissa bent down before him, breaking his attention away from the bad thoughts. She smiled, a soft smile that all moms seem to have. Her hand graced along Scott’s knee before she motioned for him to stand.

Nurse Mom led Scott down the hallway to his room. He wasn't allowed inside, it could compromise Stiles’ health. Scott stared at him through the little window, his palm pressed up against the glass.

Stiles was a thin little bird. His white feathers hid his face. His wings were beating so hard, Scott couldn’t hear anything else over the rush of his heart in his ears.

    _It was nothing more than a burnt out shell._

His best friend was named Stiles Stilinski. Scott moved into Beacon Hills the summer of third grade. Stiles was at Scott’s house within an hour of the moving van unloading. His dad pulled up in a police car, and they all walked up to the front door with a pot of coffee. Stiles was holding onto his mother’s sleeve, his eyes wide and the color of honey. Scott sat with his chin on the windowsill and watched them. Stiles was weird. He twitched a lot and broke Scott’s lamp within the first five minutes of being in his room. But as he unpacked, Scott and Stiles compared favorite tv shows and books and movies.

When Stiles’ mom came in to get him, he wrapped his arms around Scott.

“It’s fate. We were always meant to be best friends forever,” He told her.

Every summer they spent riding their bikes and having sleepovers in one of their backyards. Scott sharpened sticks on rocks to be their swords. Stiles smeared mud on their faces to be their armor. Every sleepover they were _knights-princes-astronauts_ , battling dragons and sea monsters to save the princess or alien queen or whoever.

Then Scott slept alone. At least, he tried to sleep. He couldn’t. The moon dripped through his window. He turned over and over, hot, then cold, then hot again. He couldn’t get the images out of his mind.

    _… jeep was found…_

Frustrated, Scott flicked on his laptop. Google had become his new best friend. She was always right there, shoving information down his throat faster than Stiles ever could. It took her seconds to find the article. Stiles would have taken longer. Useless.

_‘Police are in the process of investigating a tragic car accident involving local 17-year-old S. Stilinski. Authorities were called to the scene at 3:30 a.m. by a young woman who had just gotten off work from Memorial Hospital. The accident is rumored to be caused by the rain, as slick pavement could have made Stilinski’s vehicle unsteady and resulted in him driving off the road, but police have yet to discharge clearer information…’_

Scott exited out of the tab. A quick stroke of his fingers along the keys deleted his search history. The laptop was closed, slid under his bed, forgotten among the dust bunnies and half-finished research papers.

Fuck Google. Scott didn’t need a best friend anyway.

* * *

 

Stiles had two weeks of sweet, sweet freedom before his dad decided he wasn’t going back to school. And, honestly, Stiles is a bit surprised he managed to hide how awful high school was from his dad for that long. There were notes shoved in his locker and books knocked out of his hands. The interpreter tried her best to keep up with the lectures in every class period, but there were always gaps in her notes that Stiles couldn’t fill up by himself. And, honestly, if he had to try and translate Finstock’s economics lectures to anyone else, he’d probably struggle too.

Lydia and Kira were becoming really close friends, and Stiles was happy for both of them for finding common ground, but deep down, he wished he was a bigger part of their friendship. And Stiles must have been projecting his feelings towards his dad.

Well, no. Stiles _knew_ he was projecting his feelings onto his dad. He would become frustrated and storm out of the room when his dad signed new vocabulary words wrong, and he would only stubbornly communicate between him with Dr. Hale during their weekly sessions.

And apparently, Dr. Hale had been talking a lot with Stiles’ dad between sessions. They had a meeting together every Monday, the three of them, but suddenly on a Friday Stiles is stopped before he can leave the house to catch the bus.

John holds up a whiteboard, courtesy of Dr. Hale himself, and motions to the kitchen table. Stiles glances from the clock above the stove to the door. It’s 7:30, and the bus will be there any minute. But John waves his hand around, gaining Stiles’ attention. He has his serious look on, one that used to make Stiles cry when he got in trouble. He means business.

Stiles slowly sits down across from his dad. He clasps his hands in his lap and tries to emit as many happy thoughts as possible. His dad has a constant stream of anger and disappointment clouding up the kitchen. For a moment, Stiles thinks about opening a window to get the bad feelings out, but he quickly pushes the thought away as his dad shows him what he wrote on the board.

_‘You’re going to be homeschooled.’_

Stiles snorts softly and raises a brow at his dad. The other isn’t amused. Stiles glances around, lifting his hands up to click an invisible camera, then bends his index finger in a questioning sign.

_‘Where are the cameras?’_

His dad shakes his head, uncapping the Expo marker and writing on the board again. He’ll be docked at least five Good Dad points for not signing. Dr. Hale made it a rule to try as much as possible. After a few moments of erasing and rewriting, John turns the whiteboard around for Stiles to read.

    _‘I’m serious. I’ve had enough from that school. You’re going to be taught in a safe environment.’_

Stiles leans back in his seat, squinting a little at his dad. _Safe_. There is no safe anymore. His dad has word parts on his palms where he wiped the board clean. They stick to his skin and land on his coffee mug when he takes a sip.

Homeschooled? His dad is going to homeschool him? Here? At home?

Stiles closes his fists, tapping one wrist on top of the other. He then points to his dad, his head tilted in confusion.

_‘What about work?’_

John shakes his head. He opens his mouth to reply, but quickly shuts it as a flicker of frustration crosses his face. He grabs the board back, frantically scribbling down a response. Red, hot anger rolls off of him in waves. They rise to the ceiling, condensing into a big, upset storm cloud.

_‘Not me. Dr. Hale.’_

Oh. Stiles nods, slumping down. Of course, it would be Dr. Hale. His dad is too busy now after being promoted to sheriff, he doesn’t have time to grapple with the task of teaching his deaf son. Maybe, Stiles thinks, he could just teach himself. There are always commercials on TV about websites for little kids to learn from home, and colleges offer online courses, so why couldn’t Stiles just learn from the safety of his own bedroom?

 _Because_ , Stiles thinks bitterly, _I’m fucked up ten ways from Sunday._

With a sigh, Stiles presses his fingertips together and doesn’t look back up at his dad.

John must take the hint, because soon he is gone. Stiles can feel the floor rattle as he walks away. The coffee mug still sits on the counter. There’s a tiny, faded pink crescent on the rim. His mother used to drink out of that one, back when they were a whole family. Back when his dad trusted him to be alone.

The vibration of the front door closing moves through the kitchen. Stiles watches silently as the mug wobbles.

Maybe it’ll break.

* * *

 

Scott drove past front yards with sad looking decorations on the lawns. An inflatable Santa. A single string of lights on the porch. Christmas wasn’t worth decorating without the snowfall. It just didn’t seem right to anyone.

The car steered him down the road. Scott knew he was going to get lost. He always got lost. He didn’t understand how, though. It’s hard to miss the broken trees and the mile of yellow police tape.

Scott found it eventually. Three wrong turns eventually make a right, right? Right.

He shouldn’t have been there. He should have been home, asleep, like he was supposed to. Scott should have gotten back in that car and drove away. Followed every single traffic law like a good citizen and gone straight to bed. But he didn’t.

He pulled the keys from the ignition and pocketed them. Hopefully Nurse Mom won’t need to make an emergency hospital run.The car whispered for Scott to come back as he walked toward the tape. But he didn’t.

    _...found at the bottom of the ravine…_

He shouldn’t have been there. The trees were caved in around the darkness. They all curled in to try and stop Stiles’ car from going off the road, Scott could tell.

He spun away from the start of the wreckage. The rest wasn’t what he needed to see. There were remains of his jeep further down, the parts that didn’t burn up when it fell from the cliff.

    _...a burnt out shell…_

He called Scott. Three times. It was Scott’s fault. It was all Scott’s fault. He should have answered. He shouldn’t have let Stiles get so-

He swallowed. His throat slowly pulled itself apart, and he could breathe.

Scott left the scene.

Just as he had left Stiles.

**____**

 

When he was Scott’s friend, they huddled beneath blanket forts and told stories about the holes in their hearts. Stiles’ mother died during the winter of sixth grade. Scott’s father left when he was a kid. Stiles told pretty lies about how _perfect-beautiful-healthy_ she was right before she left. Scott recited poetry about how his parents had met.

“Once upon a time,” Scott whispered to him, “A man was walking along the shores of a beautiful lake. Within its calm waters lived a woman with beautiful bronzed hair. Her smile was a bright as the moon, and her eyes held the secrets of the sun. The woman heard the man singing a song to the night, so she swam ashore to meet him. It was fate.

“The moon and the sun saw how beautiful they were. Every night for years they watched as the man and the beautiful woman laughed and talked. They were so happy for the two, the sun crafted a baby out of the stars, and the moon gave the beautiful woman legs of her own so they could have a family.

“They named their baby Scott. And they lived happily ever after. Until the sun became upset with how the moon thought she did all the work, and he took away the man. The end.”

Stiles would always laugh at the end. He liked to complain about how abruptly ended it, but it was never changed.

The real story was not nearly as good. Scott’s dad knocked Mom up one night at a drunken party. His dad forced him to marry her. They hated each other by the time Scott was born.

Scott hated Stiles after he was reborn. He wasn’t the same anymore. He wasn’t Scott’s anymore. Scott broke him.

Stiles belonged to the dark night that held him as the flames ate away at his jeep. He belonged to the doctors and the medicines and the machines that beeped and screamed as they _poked-prodded-examined_ him. He wasn’t Scott’s anymore. And Scott wasn’t his.

**____**

 

Nothing good ever happened at lunch. The cafeteria was a giant wasteland full of sweaty bodies and snobby teenagers. And it smelled gross.

Scott sat by the other kids who played lacrosse, like he and Stiles always would. But that day, Danny, the goalie, motioned for Scott to sit off with him a few tables away from the other boys. Danny had his back to the rest of the cafeteria, his eyes distant as he looked at some place over Scott’s shoulder. After a few moments he cleared his throat and began talking, but Scott couldn’t focus on him. There were hundreds of mouths laughing and chewing and moving their way to the front of his mind. He couldn’t get the sounds to go away.

Danny tapped Scott’s arm. He still didn’t make eye contact. “God. This is, uh, weird. I mean, it’s not my fault, you know? I didn’t make the decision, but I’m supposed to be the one to deliver the news. Drew the short stick.”

He studied his baby carrots. Scott picked at the crust on his peanut butter and jelly and tried to pay attention to whatever he was talking about.

“...that’s really, really sweet of you and everything. But the rest of the team has been talking, and, well, we think it’s time to admit that he can’t really be a part of us anymore. He’s different.”

Danny pushed his baby carrots around with his fork. Scott narrowed his eyes at Danny, sizing him up while he tried to think of something to say.

“So if I want to be a part of the team, I can’t be friends with Stiles anymore?”

Danny smiled with his mouth, not with his eyes. He lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug, shoveling the carrots into his mouth to buy himself some time. “You two were never really friends anyway, right? And Stiles wasn’t even a real part of the team, you know. He just sat on the benches and drank water and listened to coach give speeches before the games…”

Scott didn’t listen to the rest of his story. He nodded along, pretending.

Up until that moment, Scott never thought of Stiles and the team as two different sections of his friends. Stiles was there for every _party-game-practice._ But at that moment, Scott was desperate to stay on the team. He wanted to be a part of it, to laugh and crack jokes and sit at a lunch table with them and go to their winning parties.

“I know he’s kind of weird, but he needs us right now. Isn’t that what teammates are supposed to do? Help out one another when there’s a bad time? We were all here for you when you came out of the closet, Danny. No one tried to push you away because you were different.”

Danny cleared his throat. It was splotchy and red. The blood there jumped up, nervous. “Scott. Being gay and being deaf aren’t the same thing, you know? I knew you would take this the wrong way.”

The wrong way? Was there any other way he was supposed to take it? But Scott did know where they were coming from. Stiles wouldn’t be Stiles anymore. He wouldn’t be the snarky little asshole. He wouldn’t be able to play lacrosse. How were they even supposed to talk to each other at lunch? How were they supposed to go to parties or the movies or the mall?

Scott had a choice: he could hang out with Stiles and be the weirdo with only one friend like he was before high school, or he could hang out with the team- be a guy who went to parties, got decent grades, helped rule the school.

Scott nodded. Danny smiled his dimpled little smile and they went to go sit with the other boys. They scooted down and made room for the two boys, swallowing them down with friendly curses and fist-bumps.

He never looked back. Not once.


	2. Chapter 2

Dr. Hale is ruthless. He is determined to prove once and for all that deafness does not equal impaired learning. ~~ Even though the kids at school call him  _ deaf and dumb _ ~~ ~~.~~ If he succeeds, Stiles thinks they should give him some big award and send him off to Hawaii. Or Spain. Anywhere really, as long as it’s not anywhere close to Stiles’ house. 

Shit, Stiles might even pay to get Dr. Hale sent as far away as possible. 

Dr. Hale — _ please Stiles, call me Peter— _ comes to Stiles’ house every single day with new lesson plans in multi-colored binders. He’s all about plans. Stiles likes to think his whole house is full of binders with plans inside.

Maybe that’s why he pushes Stiles so hard —he has no one to go home to at night, just rooms and rooms full of binders.

Deep down, Stiles admits it’s almost sweet how much ~~Dr. Hale~~ _Peter_ cares about him and his education. He’s like a grandfather who can tell the two kids down the street would be perfect for each other, except both kids have nothing in common and absolutely hate the other. Stiles and calculus are those two kids. 

After all the hard work Peter puts in, none of the lesson plans ever work out. Peter tries to explain calculus through sign, but Stiles still can’t understand half of what is going on. Seriously, limits are one thing, but limits at  _ infinity _ ? One summer Stiles tried to count to infinity, so he knows how high that number is.

The only subject Stiles really struggles with is calculus, and no amount of bribing can convince Peter to let him slide by without it. 

One day Peter even took the time to write out ten whole pages of notes for Stiles, on this lined pad of yellow paper to try and lighten the mood, but it didn’t help at all. Stiles can’t just look at a sheet of word-number hybrid babies and figure out how to solve for different polynomials. He’s tried, he really has, but he’s always worked better when someone shows him how to do it.

When someone  _ tells _ him how to do it.

Stiles groans in frustration, shoving Peter’s yellow pad of paper away. He can’t do this! He couldn’t even do it before the accident, and now he’s  ~~ deaf and dumb ~~ homeschooled by his freaking psychiatrist. 

His eyes flicker between the scribbled half-finished problems in his notebook and the spread of equation sheets. Stiles can’t even see the kitchen table anymore, it’s all just packets of  ~~ garbage ~~ calculations and Peter’s own notes. 

Dr. Hale just sits there and lets him have his little tantrum. And when Stiles is done, he shifts from calculus to English. One thing Peter loves more than making plans is torturing Stiles through essays. Stiles tries not to do them, but Dr. Hale has a warped sense of humor. 

Today’s essay is over “The Best No Homework Excuse”. He has one night to finish. 

It’s not that the topics aren’t fun, and it’s not that Stiles doesn’t enjoy a good essay — it’s Peter. He keeps cranking these essays out like hot buns in a factory. And they’re not even research papers, which are Stiles’ forte. They’re completely opinionated garbage!

Stiles grabs the outline flowchart from Peter’s hand, glaring at the sheet. If he could ignite a fire with his eyes, Stiles would incinerate every flowchart Peter has. He doesn’t need a dumbass chart to follow when he writes essays, he just needs to sit down, pop an Adderall, and start typing.

His method has always worked before.

Stiles clears his throat and dares a glance up at Peter. He’s leaned back in his chair, his hands propped up on the kitchen table. He watches Stiles with a slight frown tugging at the corners of his lips.

Stiles lifts his hand up to tug his own lip down in a scowl before he points to Dr. Hale. Then he makes two  _ K’s _ with his hands, placing one on top of the other and moving them in an outward circular motion. 

_ ‘Be careful. Your face might get stuck like that.’ _

Peter is not amused. He nods to Stiles’ flowchart before tapping his wrists together with closed fists.

_ ‘Get back to work.’ _

Stiles rolls his eyes and shoves the flowchart in his notebook. Words  _ are  _ hard work. Stiles hopes for a snow day, despite the fact that it’s fall in California. 

Dr. Hale says it’s good to hope. Go figure.

____

 

Apparently, the fault in Stiles’ learning comes from his environment. While his dad worships the ground Peter walks on, Stiles spends his time questioning Peter’s credentials. With every sassy twist of his fingers, Peter pulls out another stupid sheet of paper with his name elegantly etched in the center. 

So far, Stiles has counted way too many degrees—a double bachelor’s in education and psychology (with a minor in  _ English _ , no doubt), and a fucking MD with a specialty in psychiatry. He doesn’t even know how anyone has the time to go through that much school, much less the funds to support it. But by the looks of Peter’s stupidly shiny Camaro and his flashy watches and suits and pocket squares, he can’t be too poor. 

Stiles wonders, almost bitterly, where his literal  _ years _ of student debt went. And while Stiles does research on the schools Peter went to (and successfully puts off doing another essay), his dad canoodles with the enemy. 

The decision is unanimous, if no one counts Stiles’ vote—while John was smart to pull Stiles out of school, Peter insists this safe place is  _ too  _ safe. Stiles can’t learn unless he feels pressured to learn, blah blah blah, whatever. 

Stiles thinks he’s full of shit. His dad thinks Peter is God’s gift to mankind. 

So, unlucky for him, Stiles is being shipped off to spend the weekdays with Dr. Hale at his house. On the weekends he can go back to his dad’s house. He feels like a prisoner of joint custody, a kid shipped back and forth between two parents. 

His dad drops him off on Sunday night for his first week at the Hale estate. And, yeah, estate is the right word. The place is absolutely  _ huge _ and in the middle of the woods and has a driveway that must be a mile long. Stiles stares out of the cruiser's window as his dad pulls up the drive, drinking in the light wood paneling on the front porch illuminated by the huge windows dotting the front of the house.

_ Seriously _ , Stiles thinks,  _ who even needs that many windows? _

The car isn’t even parked for thirty seconds before the front door swings open and Peter steps out, his usual grimace replaced with a welcoming smile. John climbs out of the car easily, striding up to the front porch and leaving Stiles in the passenger seat. 

Suspicious, Stiles squints at Peter. He’s acting a little too excited at their arrival, and his smile makes Stiles’ stomach to a weird flippy-flop. He curls his fingers into his palms, letting his blunt nails dig red crescent-moons into the skin there. The pain jolts his attention back to the task at hand—John flapping his hand about, motioning for Stiles to hurry up. 

Stiles slings his duffel bag over his shoulder, gritting his teeth as he makes his way towards the house. The windows glisten in the dark, beckoning him forward. Where are the curtains? And why the fuck does Peter have every light on inside the house? Hello, global warming anyone?

The interior of the house, much to Stiles’ annoyance, is just as beautiful as the outside. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but an open foyer with a grand staircase in the center isn’t it. Somewhere, deep down, he thought Peter lived in a grungy apartment full of boring binders or something. 

Looking at the extravagance of the house, Stiles has no problem imagining Peter forking away  _ millions _ on his education.

Peter makes mugs of hot tea for everyone and begins showing the two the rest of the house. Stiles nods and smiles like he’s supposed to, like his dad is not abandoning him here for the week. His dad pats his cheek. Stiles is getting good at showing his teeth when people expect it.

Stiles’ room is in the west wing of the house, newly finished and ready to be lived in. It looks like it came right out of a commercial for carpet, all fresh paint and vacuum lines on the floor. The walls are a light grey, with empty picture frames scattered neatly about. He has a bookcase already shelved with the textbooks Dr. Hale gave him, and there’s a packet of math problems out on the desk for him. And when he looks closer, Stiles sees the infamous yellow pad of paper. 

Fucking calculus. 

Stiles explores the room while his dad talks with Peter. There’s an ensuite bathroom with his very own walk-in closet, and Stiles is pretty sure he doesn’t even own enough clothes to fill half of it. 

He dares a peek inside, and he isn’t surprised to find most of his clothes already there. His dad must have dropped them off. After all, Dr. Hale knows best.

The smug bastard.

Stiles shuts the door with his foot. The room makes his arms itch. It belongs to a stranger, the new Stiles.

 

* * *

 

When Stiles was Scott’s best friend forever, they made friendship necklaces even though they were for girls. They wore them every day in middle school and vowed to never, ever take them off. After the weeks Stiles was asleep, and the whole week he spent awake in the hospital without Scott coming to visit, Scott found an envelope on his front porch. The only thing it had inside was the necklace Stiles made. 

Scott didn’t even know he had been released from the hospital. He had already deleted Stiles’ number from his phone, Nurse Mom stopped trying to get him to visit after the first few days, and Regular Mom wasn’t home a lot anymore.

There was a cracking inside Scott, so loud he could almost hear it over the rushing in his ears. He doubled over, grabbing the door frame for support as his insides twisted painfully. Time stood still as his ribs shattered in his chest, poking thousands of little holes in his lungs. 

He couldn’t breathe. He ran back inside, slamming the door shut behind him. Scott stumbled down the hall to the bathroom, locking himself inside. He fell down, down, down. His teeth sunk into his wrist to keep his throat from making any noises. 

Scott sat there in the dark and cried. He cried like the stupid little baby he knew he was.

He flushed the necklace down the toilet.

 

* * *

 

To those who’d doubt him, Stiles is a good housemate. He does his schoolwork, folds his clothes, cleans up after himself each meal. But for some godforsaken reason, Peter doesn’t think anything he does is good enough. 

Stiles forgets to shut the water off in the bathroom and the sink overflows, damaging the carpet. It’s not his fault, he couldn’t hear it. Stiles forgets he put a pizza in the oven and the fire alarms go off, spraying water all over the million-dollar kitchen. It’s not his fault, he couldn’t hear it. Stiles never takes the towels out of the washing machine and by the time someone goes looking they’ve begun to grow mildew. It’s really, really not his fault, he never heard the timer go off. 

Stiles is beginning to hate water.

Peter is always mad. Stiles should do this, that, and the other to be better. Stiles should pay more attention. If you lose one sense, you should work on strengthening the others. He can’t keep blaming everything on his deafness, millions of deaf people operate functionally every single day, why can’t he?

Stiles doesn’t bother reminding him that he wasn’t always deaf. He hasn’t even been so for a year, there’s no way he can just bounce back and act like everything is great and he’s fine. But he knows what Peter wants, and he knows he can’t stand Stiles being upset. He’s just like everyone else—they only want to know that Stiles is healing, he’s in recovery, taking it one day at a time or whatever.

Stiles knows that not all of him is broken, just his ears. They are Humpty Dumpty, and none of the king’s horses or the king’s men could put them back together again. And he has his funny feeling inside that the other people can’t hear, either. Or at least they can’t understand.

Tuesday mornings are Stiles’ favorite days at the Hale house, mostly because Peter is gone to his office job where he talks to depressed ladies or suicidal teenagers and tries to stitch them back together like he’s doing to Stiles and his dad. 

Stiles leaves his jacket on, unzipped, and wanders around the kitchen. It’s absolutely huge, with shiny granite counters and this amazing oven. Luckily, he didn’t cause too much damage to anything with the pizza fiasco.

He walks around in nothing but his jacket and his Batman boxers, munching on an apple and reading the funny pages in the paper. The house is too drafty for boxers alone, and it’s too hot to sleep in full pajamas. So he’s found the perfect combination. He doesn’t opt for any modesty on Tuesday mornings, because honestly, if he wants to lounge around in his underwear in a big mansion all by himself, well, this is America. 

And besides, the house staff usually arrives in the afternoon, following Peter around like a bunch of lost puppies. As for family, Stiles has only managed to learn that Peter has two living relatives, both of whom are in college out of state. 

So, once again, big empty mansion + underwear. Do the math. 

Stiles is two panels into a  _ Garfield  _ strip when a tap on his shoulder startles him out of his reading. He drops the apple on the ground, and if there’s one thing  _ Mario Kart _ got right, it’s that dropped fruit it slippery. Stiles gasps sharply as he whirls around, his feet sliding out from underneath him as he steps on his half-eaten apple. He falls, smashing on the tiled floor and letting out a pained noise. 

It must be loud, because he’s quickly rolled over, two wide eyes searching him over for any immediate breaks or bruises. And, holy fuck, those eyes are  ~~ gorgeous wonderful breath-taking ~~ staring daggers into his soul. 

Stiles scrambles to his feet, making a mad dash out of the kitchen and towards the stairs. He leaves his apple there, forgotten on the floor next to the newspaper, because getting chastised by Peter for making a mess is better than dealing with whatever rage those eyes held in the kitchen.

He wants to spend the rest of his Tuesday morning in his room, tapping his feet to build up walls around himself. Stiles Stilinski may not be a coward, but he sure knows how to isolate himself from others.

Not to mention, the guy must know about The Accident. He must know about Stiles. He’s not someone who works on the estate, and the only people who have keys are the other Hales. He has to know about the freaky kid who was hit by a truck and—

_ … launched through the windshield in a perfect arc, landing tangled in the arms of a pine tree... _

The other guy doesn’t let him be alone for too long. He must have called Peter. Of course he called Peter, because the world hates him and the gods sent Peter to torture Stiles for eternity. 

Stiles’ door is pushed open a few minutes after the kitchen ordeal, and the guy walks in. Immediately, his lips start to move. The words curl up around his face, petting his hair and rubbing against his stubbly cheeks. He hands Stiles a heavy mug of hot tea. Stiles makes a face, because what is with Hales and tea, but takes it anyway.

He uses both hands to pick up the mug, the sleeves of his jacket covering his palms. For a moment he forgets he’s still only in his underwear as he settles down on the edge of his bed. He takes a sip and it burns his lips and tongue and throat. His hands shake as he sets it down on the bedside table. 

The other guy uses his own shirttail to wipe up the mess. Then he kneels down in front of the bed. He’s laughing. Only then does Stiles remember he’s sitting in his Batman boxers.  _ Idiot. _

The guy quickly finger spells his name. 

_ D-E-R-E-K. _

Derek touches his knuckles together and twists his hands, then points at Stiles. 

_ ‘How are you?’ _

Stiles shakes his head and tugs at the corner of his duvet, pulling it free and using it to cover himself. He scrunches up his eyebrows as he thinks, watching as Derek repeats the sign again. It’s not anything Peter signs regularly, and Stiles can only remember so much from the dumb videos he has to watch. 

They’re VHS tapes, and the people are from, like, the ’80s, and Stiles has a hard time concentrating on anything but their wardrobes. So he learns most of his sign from Google, and the rest from Peter.

Derek repeats the sign again, for the third time, and Stiles grunts in frustration. He holds his palms out towards Derek, unsure how to respond. Stiles slumps his shoulders and braces himself for the flash of angry hands in his peripheral, but nothing happens. Derek just shakes his head, turns, and disappears for a moment. 

When he returns, he holds out something for Stiles. 

The yellow pad of paper is back.

Stiles hesitated for a moment before taking the pad of paper and uncapping the pen Derek brought with it, writing ‘Fine’. Derek holds his hand up near his chest, fingers out in a five-handshape. His thumb is on his sternum. 

_ ‘Fine’.  _

Stiles mimics him, eyes wide. Derek’s not mad that he didn’t know how to answer, and he’s not mad that Stiles made a mess, and he’s not mad that Stiles isn’t dressed appropriately to start the day. 

Derek takes the pad and begins to write something else down, the pen carving out happy spaces in the horrid yellow paper. For a moment, Stiles thinks yellow isn’t such a bad color.

Derek shifts so Stiles can’t read over his shoulder as he writes, and Stiles reaches for his drink again. He sticks his fingers over the mug of tea, letting them thaw in the steam. He watches the ice drip off of them a little. They wiggle around, happy to be used.

____

 

Stiles stays up past midnight in the family room that night trying to catch up on his reading. He only keeps a lamp on so he doesn’t disturb Peter or Derek. It’s hard to keep his eyes on the pages of  _ How to Kill a Mockingbird _ , but if he doesn’t get his chapters in by tomorrow, he’ll be screwed. 

Peter had expected him to finish while he was out of the house, but instead, Stiles went over a bunch of new vocabulary with Derek. He learned how to sign  _ baseball  _ and  _ cookies  _ and  _ please give me more.  _ Derek didn’t get angry or yell when Stiles messed up the signs. He just fixed the handshape and continued on. Peter yells ( ~~ which literally falls on deaf ears ~~ ) when Stiles gets distracted. Derek doesn’t. It’s a weird change.

The moon taunts Stiles through the window. The trees outside wave to him. They want him to go to sleep. He wants to go to sleep. If he has to read one more sentence about Atticus Finch and the trial, his eyes are going to roll out of his skull. 

Just as he’s ready to give up on the assignment, Derek comes down the stairs and into the kitchen, walking right past Stiles on the couch. Stiles shifts in his seat, peeking over the top of the book. There’s a spray of light that spills over the tiles. The refrigerator. Then it’s gone, and Derek is standing in the entryway to the kitchen.

Derek tilts his head at Stiles. His lips move. Stiles doesn’t try to understand, and honestly, if Derek isn’t talking Harper Lee, Stiles doesn’t really have time. Derek is wearing this blue robe that looks older than he is, and Stiles is more interested in the holes than whatever Derek is talking about. He looks like some sort of homeless man begging for change, but instead of a sign he holds up a plate of pie buried under a scoop of melting ice cream.

Derek sits down in the chair across from Stiles. He tilts his head at the boy, eying the book. Stiles holds it up better so he can read the title. Derek nods, taking a bite and chewing. The smell of apple pie curls up around Stiles, sweet and forgiving and laced with memories of his mother.

His mother.  _ His mother. _ Stiles was on his way to see her. He was going to sit beside her and tell her about the year. He had just turned seventeen. Dad gave him the beautiful jeep a few months ago. Scott made first line. Scott.  _ Scott. _

Stiles quickly shuts the book and stands. Stars trickle into his vision, the moon shoving them out of the sky. Then he’s back in the chair. Derek spilled some ice cream on the coffee table when he tried to catch Stiles from falling. Peter will be mad. He’ll blame Stiles.

Stiles cries. It’s loud and booming and he understands the concept of being quiet, he really does, but the vibrations he makes all feel the same and he can’t figure out how to distinguish loud from soft. Derek smells of bad things. Bad things Stiles shouldn’t be thinking about.

Derek tries to calm him down. His hands curl around Stiles’ shoulders, torso, legs, trying trying trying to get him to be still. Stop squirming. Stop screaming. The walls around Stiles shake. They crumble down down down into dust. He can’t stop seeing the walls crush around him. Glass shatter.  _ Scott. Mom. _

The overhead lights flick on. Derek stops touching Stiles. The boy pulls his legs up to his chest, burying his face in them. He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t move. Peter grabs him by the arm, practically dragging him up the stairs and into his room. The walls quiver as the door is shut behind him. They’re crying, tears pooling on the carpet. Water ruins carpet. Stiles knows.

He stumbles to the bed. He can’t stop making sounds. Wailing. Screaming. Moaning. He crawls under the blankets, holding them up around his head like a shield from the outside world. Spiders crawl out of his ears. They live in empty spaces. They spin webs around his face, around his mouth. They make it hard to breathe. Stiles scratches along his neck, clawing at the skin to try and get them off. He can’t breathe. The spiders lay eggs on his tongue. He swallows them, and they hatch inside his lungs. He can’t breathe.

The bed beside him dips. The blanket is pulled away from his face. Stiles’ hands are trapped at his sides. He kicks and fights until there’s nothing left inside him. Derek doesn’t let him go until his breathing is back to normal and his eyes flutter shut.

He’s gone in the morning. 

Stiles wakes up breathing in dirt. He coughs, spitting out the bugs and pebbles, but when he breathes again tree branches wrap around his mouth and-

No. It’s the blanket. It became draped over his face while he slept. Stiles rips it off fast and gets out of bed. The house is dark in the west wing. Derek and Peter sleep in the east wing. Stiles isn’t allowed there.

Stiles turns on all the lights in the house as he makes his way to the kitchen, because lights scare away the bad things and  _ fuck _ global warming. He pours himself a bowl of cereal and sits at the table, waiting for the rest of the house to wake up. While he shovels in spoonfuls of his blue-colored breakfast, Stiles tries to think of a possibility where he didn’t totally ruin his first impressions on Dr. Hale’s nephew.

First it was those goddamn boxers. And he fell. And ran away like a scared little kid.

_ Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. _

Then it was the screaming in the middle of the night.

_ Stupid. Loser. Stupid. Baby. Stupid. _

And then-

Stiles’ thoughts are cut off as he watches someone turn off the lights in the living room. Peter slowly walks into the kitchen, nodding good morning to Stiles. Stiles blushes a dark red and looks down at his milk in the bowl. It’s the color of the sky. He clicks his heels together three times beneath the table.  _ There’s no place like home. _

No tornado comes out of the sky milk to whisk him away to safety. And, sadly, no house drops on his head.

Derek walks in shortly after, just as Stiles finishes draining the milk from his bowl. He flashes Stiles a friendly smile and signs the same question from yesterday. 

_ ‘How are you?’ _

It takes Stiles a moment to respond. He searches Derek’s face for any signs of anger or disappointment about last night. While he sits there, Derek pushes forward a notepad.  ~~ Jesus, they’re everywhere. ~~ Derek’s neat, blocky handwriting is on the first line.  _ Confused.  _

Derek moves his hands around and around in front of his face, eyebrows furrowed as he pulls a funny face.

_ ‘Confused.’ _

Stiles laughs.  _ Angry, scared, sad, sleepy  _ all go the same way. Five new words.

Stiles chooses sleepy. Derek nods. He makes a Y-shape with his hand and slides it back and forth.

_ ‘Same.’ _

Stiles cleans up his mess. Derek leaves the house. Peter harps on Stiles to hurry up and get ready for his lessons. It’s like nothing ever happened.

 

* * *

 

Stiles wasn’t invited to the party that night. The rules were clear, if they won State, the people who made it happen would get to have a party in the gym. Hell, Scott scored the winning goal. He wasn’t going to miss that party for anything.

When Stiles was Scott’s best friend, they made a promise a year after his mom died. They cut their palms and shook hands and said they would always go visit her on her deathiversary. 

But her deathiversary landed on the day they had the championship game. 

Scott was actually playing on the field for once,  _ and  _ there were college scouts there. He wasn’t going to miss that. He didn’t blame Stiles for not understanding, because he never played anyway, he just sat on the bench. Missing the game wouldn’t be that big of a deal for him.

He called Scott before the game. Stiles was furious. He asked Scott to listen and told him it wouldn’t take long—Scott was the root of all evil, a toxic shadow. Scott told him he needed to move on with his life. Stiles said he was the cause of everything nasty and dangerous.

Later that night, Stiles called again. Three times. Of course Scott didn’t pick up. He was just drunk-dialing to apologize and blubber about being friends again. That conversation could wait until morning.

_...The jeep was found at the bottom of the ravine. It was nothing more than a burnt out shell… _

Scott didn’t pick up. Stiles was waiting for him, and he never came.

_ He called. _

_ Three times. _

_ Scott didn’t answer. _

_ The jeep was found at the bottom of the ravine. _

_ He shouldhavedone-something-everything-anything _

_ Instead, he left him alone. _

____

 

When Stiles was Scott’s friend, they would spend Thursdays cleaning. Scott would chase Stiles around the house with the vacuum. It was a dragon. Stiles would swat rags at him while they dusted. They were their magic wands. The spoons and forks were guns, plates, shields.

The police officer arrived while Scott was drying the dishes. Alone. She introduced herself as Detective Whoever and asked if she could come in.

_ It wasn’t his fault. _

She followed him into the kitchen. The cop sat at the table while Scott continued drying.

_ Itwasn’thisfault-Itwasn’thisfault-Itwasn’thisfault. _

_ “ _ I only have a few questions here. Nothing to worry about, we’re just trying to tie up loose ends and all.” She spoke like it was nothing. “The phone records indicate that Stiles called you the night of the accident.”

Scott nodded. A puppet on some string. “Yes. Stiles called me. I didn’t pick up. I was at a party, I didn’t have time to talk to him. I didn’t want to talk to him.”

The officer nodded, pulling out a little book and flipping it open. Scott cleared his throat.

“I have no idea why he called, we weren’t friends anymore. Just grew apart, you know? Highschool does that.”

Detective Whoever finished scribbling down some notes in her little book. She flashed Scott a tired smile, saying something in agreement about friends drifting away. He hummed in response like he was listening and showed her to the door.

“If you think of anything else, here’s my number.” She handed Scott a tiny little card. “As I said, there is nothing to worry about, we just want to hurry up and close this case.”

On his way home from school the next day, Scott stopped by the railroad crossing, a mile or two down the road from where Stiles went off. He took his phone out of his pocket and nestled it right next to the iron rail and drove over it three times. Scott threw the remains out of his window as he drove past the scene.

 

* * *

 

Dr. Hale has a library in the west wing and it smells like cough drops. Not the good kind, either, but the sticky cherry ones that leave a film in your mouth. 

Stiles sits in a fat leather chair, scribbling away at his timed essay. Peter sits on the couch, a hideous blanket over his lap. Stiles can’t focus on anything but the smell of the cough drops. It itches his nose, makes a shade over his eyes. It sticks to his pen and makes it hard to write.

He ends up cutting his essay short, only managing to come up with two paragraphs and a closing sentence. Then he looks up at Peter. The man slowly unwraps one of the little ovals of death and pops one into his mouth. Stiles thinks he’s  ~~addicted~~ dependent on the red dye.

Stiles grimaces as he glances around the room, looking anywhere but the pile of cough drop wrappers on the coffee table. Peter has a fan in the corner that emits a humming sound for white noise. Funny, he’s stuck in a room with a deaf teenager yet he insists on having a white noise machine. 

Dr. Hale waves his hand in the air to get Stiles’ attention back, and the boy grunts softly as he glares at Peter. He didn’t sleep well last night, and he’s really not in the mood for another timed essay. Peter signs slowly so Stiles can keep up. He understands more than he did a few weeks ago, thanks to Derek’s morning vocabulary lessons, but he’s not very good at reading signs fast.

_ ‘Your father is worried. He thinks you need to open up more about the accident.’ _

Adjacent to Stiles is a floor-to-ceiling wall of books. He’s not allowed to touch them, of course, and he doesn’t even want to read them. They’re boring biographies from people who wore powdered wigs and pissed in the woods. There are no knights in shining armor, alien invasions, or crazy dictatorships.

_ ‘Or he could be wrong, and none of this is bothering you at all. He said you suffer from panic attacks. This could be how you normally respond to trauma.’ _

Rain pours down the window behind Dr. Hale. Stiles doesn’t respond. Once he got angry and  ~~ mouthed signed ~~ wrote him off. He called Dr. Hale a loser who had no friends because he scared them off with his doctor shit. He didn’t have any kids and his wife-girlfriend-husband-whoever left him, and even his own family gave up on him because he wouldn’t stop trying to get inside their heads. 

Nothing Stiles did to purposefully make Peter angry worked. He just nodded, blinked a few times, and tried to get Stiles to keep expressing his feelings. Stiles gave up on that. Peter already got mad at everything else Stiles did, so he knew from experience, it wasn’t much fun anyway.

Ten minutes go by before Peter throws his hands up in the air and stalks out of the room. Satisfied with his little victory, Stiles rushes to the couch, crawling under the afghan. He weaves his fingers through the material, warming them up. The wall on the clock says 3:30. Derek will be home from work soon.

Peter made a deal with him. He could take a year of college off and move back home if he picked up some shifts at the coffee shop. Apparently, there was some big house fire at Peter’s real house. This one belonged to Derek’s mom and dad. Stiles didn’t know the whole story yet, but he’s only known the guy for a week. 

That’s hardly enough time for prime snooping.

Stiles picks stray hairs from the blanket. At least seven different people have used this particular one. They belong to rich people who feel the need to have an extra session here to whine to a stranger. Stiles lays them all out on the arm of the couch.

He blinks up as the books on the bookshelf shudder. They reach off the shelves, giggly and warm. 

Derek’s home. The house is always so happy when he returns.

And, secretly, so is Stiles

____

Stiles first met Dr. Hale after his mother died.

She was strong, Claudia. She fought and fought and fought every day of her life. When they diagnosed her with cancer, they said it wasn’t the bad kind. She told Stiles that in a few months she would be all better and they could go on walks again and bake apple pies for his birthday. And that happened, yeah. They pumped her full of medicines and the cancer in her lungs got scared and ran away. It stayed hidden for three whole months. 

Then the headaches began.

She was supposed to go through it again. Chemo. Radiation. Surgery. The doctors had a P-L-A-N plan. She wasn’t supposed to die. They were going to get it out, cut the bad pieces of her brain away so it wouldn’t poison her anymore. They were going to get it all this time so it couldn’t keep paying hide and seek with the doctors.

Within the first week of her chemotherapy, she died. Stiles was sitting on the bed with her, working on his math problems. She was good at helping Stiles with math, she knew just how to teach him so he could focus long enough to understand what was going on. She made school easy. 

Claudia was in the middle of explaining how the quadratic formula works when she dropped the papers in her hand. Her eyes rolled back in her skull, flashing Stiles the whites.

The machines screamed into Stiles’ ears. 

The nurses were frantic, trying to pull the wailing Stiles from his mother so they could revive her.

They couldn’t. She died, and Stiles was there to watch it happen.

The funeral was quick. It happened the two days after she left. There was a line of people waiting to stare at the body. Stiles sat up front next to the casket, watching the heads slowly shift forward, one by one. Everyone was talking, trying not to be heard, making this buzzing sound Stiles couldn’t quite shake off. 

Everyone who knew her in her last days at the hospital were there, coats awkwardly draped over their shoulders. Kids Stiles didn’t hang out with from school were there, sweaty and forced to come by their parents. Neighbors, aunts, cousins, people from her highschool-college-university.

Everyone spoke so softly to her. They told her that they miss her, she was so brave, she’s in a better place now, they love her. Then they tiptoed away, gently sitting down. It’s called a wake, but everyone acts so softly. 

They don’t actually want the dead to rise.

There was a white tent. It was raining. It doesn’t ever snow, but there was a thick white blanket covering the coffin with white roses over it. Stiles pretended that was the snow. He stood on his tiptoes to see the bottom of the hole. The mouth of the grave was inches away from his feet.

The giant beehive of dirt was dumped into the hole to keep Stiles’ mommy from floating away with her rose snowflakes in the blizzard. The wind screamed over the dozens of black beetles on the hill waiting with Stiles to watch his mom be buried. He closed his eyes and tried to remember other dead people, tried to picture his mother next to them.

Scott’s hamster died in the fourth grade. He cried so hard that Stiles was sure he was going to drown in snot and tears.

Stiles’ grandma died when he was little. The day they buried her, he walked fast behind his mom, clutching onto her sleeve. Granna was waiting in her coffin for them, right by the hole she was going to be put in. She was on her hill, the hill everyone in her family had been buried in. She picked out her own coffin and hymnals and prayers. She said she didn’t want flowers, she was allergic, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be sneezing in heaven. Stiles’ mother cried. Softly. She didn’t like making a scene in public. Stiles was too distracted by his mother’s tears to pay attention to the service.

He opened his eyes. The minister was still quoting the bible even after his mom was under the ground. Restless ghosts swirled around their graves.

The flowers beside the gravesite were wilting. So was Stiles. He stayed wilted, and no amount of attention and love he was given through warm casseroles or post-funeral pastries could make his petals full again. 

His dad drank, stayed out late at the office, basically tried his best to avoid Stiles as much as possible. He looked like her. Everyone always said that, and then all of a sudden it was a badbadbad thing.

They started seeing Dr. Hale at the police station a few months later. He was a specialist who dealt with police officers and their families. Certified in stitching people back up after trauma, aiding them through stress. Stiles had never heard of such a thing until his mother died, but he hadn’t been a  _ troubled adolescent  _ then.

Peter opened his dad up, mainly. John gave the man a key to his head and let Dr. Hale pickaxe his way through the tunnels there. Stiles didn't. He didn’t like how Dr. Hale tried to creep in and move his brain around without his permission. He hated being boobytrapped into talking about his feelings. Sometimes he acted along for his dad. Mostly, he sat in silence with a few asshole remarks here and there.

Nothing’s really changed. John and Peter got close after his mom died, and even closer after whatever happened to Peter happened. Stiles doesn’t really know what’s up with that, so when he gets home for the weekend he decides to do what he does best—research.

His dad is sitting on the couch when Peter drops him off. He has a glass of whiskey in one hand and a pen in the other, too focused on the pile of papers in his lap to do more than nod at Stiles when he walks in. 

Stiles doesn’t mind. It’s one less pair of eyes watching his every move.

He hurries up the stairs, being careful not to trip along the way. His mom used to joke about how the wood floors were icy. They grab onto his feet as he goes, seeping through his sneakers and socks to tap invisible snow on his toes. Maybe they’ll fall off.

Stiles collapses on his old bed when he gets to his room. He drops a hand off the side, not lifting his face from the pillow. His body works on autopilot, dragging the laptop from under the bed and tossing it on the mattress beside him. Stiles sits up, cracks his knuckles, and gets to work. 

It takes him a few minutes to shift the shady conspiracy theory articles from the good stuff, but then he can piece together the whole story.

 

_ CHRISTMAS HOUSE FIRE LEAVES EIGHT DEAD _

_    News 6’s Mike Kohan is on the scene of a deadly inferno in Beacon Hills, California. The blaze began at approximately 1A.M., according to homeowner Dr. Peter Hale. His wife, daughter, and his extended family were all present. _

_    “It happened really fast,” Survivor Laura Hale told the reporter. “As soon as we figured out what was going on, it was too late. Only my uncle and my brother were able to make it out.” _

_    The origin of the fire has not been fully determined, although the fire marshall has classified it as an electrical issue until future evidence is found. More information on this deadly house fire will be featured in tomorrow’s Morning With Mike on News Channel 6. _

 

Stiles quickly closes out of the tab. He doesn’t remember it being on the news or anything. Maybe it was one of those one-time things, and it was swept up in the vortex of half assed cases that no one is motivated to finish. 

He hurries to the bathroom. Eight dead. Three survivors. Stiles takes a long shower to wash the fire and the ash from Derek-Peter-Laura’s burnt family out of his hair.

 

* * *

 

Back when Stiles was Scott’s best friend, they would sneak out at night to go see his mom. It wasn’t really sneaking out, both of their parents knew where they were going. But for some reason it felt like the two of them were doing something they weren’t supposed to, but for a good cause. They were Batman and Robin, out to save the day.

Stiles’ mom was buried in a little secluded place on a hill. There used to be a tiny little neighborhood up there at some point, and both of Stiles’ parents lived up there as kids. Apparently it had been around forever. 

All of Stiles’ family was buried up there, in a little patch of grass near some trees that used to be part of their property waywayway back. Sometime in the 70s it was torn down. 

Now it belonged to the dead.

It was only a couple miles away from their houses, and they made it there and back before sunrise. 

That night Scott could have made it there and back to the high school before anyone noticed he was gone. 

He shook the thoughts from his head and rolled over in bed, tugging the blankets up over his shoulders like a protective shell.

He couldn’t sleep. Again. The moon dribbled light into his bedroom. It had just finished raining, the last wispy storm clouds disappearing into the sky. The lacrosse game ended with the rain. Stiles had seen the newly awaken moon, too.

_ Stiles called him three times. _

The first time Scott ever saw Stiles cry was at his mother’s grave on one of her deathiversarys. Stiles pretended like Scott didn’t see him. Scott pretended not to know what he meant when Stiles told him not to tell anyone.

The last time Scott ever saw Stiles cry was a few days before the State game. Scott was on his way to lunch, Stiles was heading to the library to finish an essay that was due next hour. He looked clean and colorful. He was chewing bubblegum. His eyes were dead and baggy, but they are high school students. All of ’em have dead eyes.

Scott said hello. Stiles hardly glanced up at him. His eyes flickered angrily when he did. They were wet. He might have said something in return, but Scott didn’t notice, too focused on the fact that Stiles was crying.

After the accident, everyone asked why. Why? Why? Why did it happen? What did Stiles do to cause the guy to smash into him? How did he manage to fly off the road and into the ravine? Was it a suicide attempt? Was he crazy? Did he fall asleep?

No. Maybe. Yes.

Stiles hadn’t slept in the past week, if that. 

Why? You want to know why?

Drop yourself into the oven. Sit there, baking slowly. Fry yourself. Wait until your skin bubbles up like dough and peels itself away from your body. After that, get out of the oven and step into the shower. The water is salty tears. Coarse. Then pull on your clothes, woven with barbed wire and broken glass. Over that goes your tightest fitting jacket.

Look in the mirror and see a ghost staring back at you. Hear every heartbeat scream that it’s your fault that your mother died. You could have saved her. It’s your fault. You’re useless. Your best friend doesn’t even want to hang out with you anymore because you’re so obsessed with your dead mother.

“Why?” is not even a question. The answer is obvious, he’d been haunted by himself forever, and Scott let the ghosts resurface.

New question: “Why didn’t he snap sooner?”

Answer: Scott had no idea.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets a little dark at the end. I tagged everything already, so remember, you've already been warned. 
> 
> Also, this isn't going to be the last chapter. There's probably going to be a few more because I like leaving suspenseful endings.

Peter harps on Stiles that Monday when he’s back at the Hale house, and Stiles takes the chastisement with a grain of salt. Yeah, he’ll admit that he didn’t do any of his weekend assignments, and Peter has a right to be upset with him. 

But Peter’s not just upset, he’s downright  _ pissed.  _ He takes Stiles’ phone privileges away and slaps on a big fat “no laptop or television usage” until next week. It’s the nasty bow on the top of an even more loathsome gift.

Stiles can’t even call his dad and ask if all of this is even legal, but some part of him can’t be too mad with the punishment, because when he looks at Peter he sees flakes of ash filtering through the air.

He can’t stop thinking about the fire. Peter had a wife. Peter had a daughter. Peter had six other family members die in his own house, and now he lives in a place that belonged to his ghost sister and her ghost husband and their ghost kids. Stiles wonders whose bed he’s sleeping in. Maybe it was a guest room. Maybe it was one of the kid’s.

The thought makes Stiles’ skin crawl.

He wants to ask Derek about the fire, but he doesn’t know the sign. And he can’t look it up because he got his goddamn phone and laptop taken away. But he doesn’t see much of Derek for that week, anyway. 

He’s not there at breakfast to give Stiles his morning vocabulary lessons. The house doesn’t quiver happily at 3:30 because he doesn’t come home from work until after dinner.

Stiles slumps down in his desk chair, gnawing on the end of his ballpoint pen as he stares out his bedroom window. He needs to be doing his work, but he can’t focus, and none of the shitty breathing techniques Peter taught him are working.

For the first time in almost a year, Stiles feels alone again.

 

* * *

 

The kids at school were saying Stiles tried to commit suicide. People at the grocery store said it was a hit and run. Everyone was talking, talking, talking. 

Stiles was drunk, fell asleep at the wheel, didn’t have his lights on. He planned/didn’tplan. He was finewithanything. 

Scott wasn’t sure if he should tell anyone the truth. Would it be better for Stiles to be the rumored suicidal teenager or the kid whose best friend drove him to the point of insanity?

_ Not his fault. Not his fault. Not his fault. Not his fault. Not his fault. _

Scott chose the first one. For his own sake.

_ Scott did this to him. It’s all because of him. Stiles called. Three times. _

The students on the yearbook committee debated how to give Stiles recognition. Those who were die-hard lacrosse fans wanted to give him a full page spread. Mostly, Scott thought, to get noticed by the players. Others thought he should only have half a page, or maybe they could raise some money and put him in the back with the advertisements. 

It wasn’t like Stiles had died, or anything. At least, not physically.

____

 

Scott called John Stilinski after he realized he had forgotten how to sleep. Actually, Scott called the police station. The receptionist answered.

_ onetwothree times _

She said, “Hello, 911, what’s your-”

_ jeep was found _

“Scott McCall. Let me talk to him.

_ bottom of the ravine _

She sighed loudly into the phone. Scott waited for the rejection, but it never came. “Hold on.”

_ left him _

While he waited, Scott paced around the room. Opened the curtains. Closed them. Stiles used to say that when Scott got sad he was really angry and when he was angry it really meant he was afraid. Scott was afraid.

_ alone _

John finally picked up. His voice was madmadmad. “Scott.”

_ a burnt out shell _

Scott hung up the phone. He turned the radio on, volume all the way up. It rattled the walls-floors-wholehouse. The windows threatened to break. Shatter into a million little pieces.

_ jeep was found _

He brushed his teeth until the water in the tap turned from hot to cold. His gums bled. Scott thought his teeth had fallen out, but they were still there when he lifted his head to look in the mirror.

_ called _

Scott put his mouth under the tap. Rinsed. Spit. Set the toothbrush in its spot and left. 

He sat on the bed. Pressed his fingertips into his cheeks. If he rammed his head into the wall, he could have fractured every bone in his face. Just like Stiles. Scott could hit his ears with baseball bats and go deaf from the blow. He’d be like Stiles.

_ 1.2.3.1.2.3.1.2.3.1.2.3. _

Scott’s fingers drifted down his chin-throat-thyroid down down, counting his ribs, reading the bumps like Braille. The music shrieked so loud that it made his ears ring. He wanted to flay himself open like a fish. He wanted to cut himself down the middle so scientists could examine his insides and discover what’s wrong with him.

_ H i s    f a u l t _

 

* * *

 

Derek doesn’t teach Stiles any more signs for a whole next week. Stiles tries not to let it bother him, but a tiny voice in the back of his head won’t stop nagging. Between Peter and the dumbass voices, Stiles has had  _ enough _ nagging. If he could power the world on nagging, Stiles would be rich. 

Stiles sits at the kitchen table, munching on a lunch of carrots and peanut butter M&M’s. The Lunch Gods still hate him, and he can’t figure out what kind of sacrifice will appease them. Maybe they’ll accept a virgin sacrifice in the form of a depressed, fucked up, deaf kid. Stiles could do that, but for now, he’s stuck finishing schoolwork during his lunch.

He’s scribbling frantically in his notebook, popping in a handfull of M&M’s as he tries to hurry up and finish his essay. Peter’s stupid punishment is over as of today, and he told Stiles that he could regain his technology privileges as soon as his daily work was done. 

Derek walks in as Stiles finishes writing about Who Matters Today VS Tomorrow, taking a seat across from him. 

The older man doesn’t say a word.

Well, that’s not entirely the case. Derek talks, Stiles just doesn’t hear him. He waved when Derek came into the kitchen, but then he went right back to writing. If Derek didn’t want to be around him all last week, Stiles doesn’t want to waste his time waiting around for him to say something useful. Their conversations have been short and to the point. Derek usually says hi, Stiles waves hello, and then they go back to awkwardly dancing around one another.

Stiles shuts his notebook and leans back in his seat, eyes darting excitedly up at Derek, focusing on his lips as they form words.

_-u d er s? t? Understand!_ _…. l c- no, k, .. like?_ Is that like? _Understand. Like. … e? r?_ blank _-e-r? Her? Her. Understand. Like. Her._

Stiles shakes his head, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He lifts his hands up, tapping one palm with the fingertips of his other hand. 

_ ‘Again?’   _ He rubs his hand in a circle on his chest. ‘ _ Please?’ _

Derek frowns. His eyebrows do this weird thing where they bunch up, then pull apart, then bunch up again like they don’t know where they’re supposed to go. His eyes are stormy. Mad. Lightning crackles within them. Stiles feels a rumble over his body as they thunder. Derek shakes his head, pushing himself away from the table.

He grabs Stiles’ notebook from him and writes  _ forget. _ Derek places his hand on his forehead, then moves it like he’s wiping something away. 

_ ‘Forget it.’ _

He curls his index finger and bounces it, taps his fingers against his head, points at Stiles, then places his thumb under his chin. His thumb flicks outwards. Harshly. Stiles feels it stabbing through him, nestling itself right between his ribs and his heart. It makes it hard to breathe.

_ ‘You don’t need to know.’ _

Stiles nods once. Derek stalks out of the room.

Derek does not comment when Stiles plays his copy of Super Smash Bros all day. Stiles doesn’t say anything when Derek makes an effort to pointedly avoid him at all costs for most of the afternoon.

The fight simmers gently for the majority of the afternoon, bubbles rising and foaming without actually spilling over the edge. The heat rises and lowers, ingredients floating and eventually sinking to the bottom. The pot doesn’t boil over until sunset.

Derek eats dinner in his bedroom. Stiles has already started on the dishes when he comes in with his empty plate. 

He pretends not to notice Derek as the man walks around the kitchen, bringing dirty dishes and leftovers to the sink. 

Derek doesn’t try to get Stiles’ attention.

The air around Stiles fizzles with an emotion he can’t quite describe. It brushes against his back, calls his name. But when Stiles turns around to face it, it’s gone. He sees the shape, the outline, but never the face. It’s maddening.

Derek waits until the table is cleared to leave again. He walks past Stiles, fingertips grazing along his shoulder. The heat seeps into his skin, warms him up from the inside. 

And then it’s gone, as quick as summer lightning. Stiles is the empty sky. Derek’s the heat storm, growing and pulsing only to fizzle out moments later.

Stiles wishes he would last a little longer.

____

_ The jeep was found at the bottom of the ravine. It was nothing more than a burnt out shell.  _

_ Adrenaline kicks in when you’re dying. That’s what everybody says, but nobody is able to grasp. Except for being bloody and cold, he could have done anything. He had superhuman powers of smell. The burnt rubber up on the road. The dripdripdrip of sap on the tree trunk. The glugglug of gasoline in his tank. He could see what people were thinking. He could climb thousands of steps, jump into the sky, grab ahold of Mars. He could do anything. _

_ Then the snakes crawled into his head. They curled up on either side, making his ears feel heavy and wrong.  _

_ Shadows hid inside the cage of his ribs. A storm was raging inside his skull, brain flashing with lightning. His lungs were tired, full of pine needles, ready to take a nap. His kidneysliverstomach were floating away in the wind. _

_ The rain poured down his face, mixing with the sticky sapsapbloodsapsap it was everyw h e r e everywhere he could taste it in his mouth the metalmetalmetal it rolled down his face in beads and dripped to the ground t h e snakes were venomous inside his head and they poisoned his ears t h e storm in his skull was fizzling out t h e pine needles in his chest had poked thousands of little holes and he was d e f l a t i n g _

Stiles gasps, his eyes flying open as he stares at the dark ceiling. He chokes on the air, unable to get any in through the wracked sobs leaving his throat. He kicks his legs, tries to move his arms, but he’s trapped. He’s trapped. He’s trapped, and he can’t move, and he’s going to die alone and his dad won’t ever forgive himself and— 

He’s not alone. Derek is there. He has Stiles pinned to the bed underneath him, eyes wide and glistening with sleep. His lips are moving, but Stiles can’t see their shape in the dark. He doesn’t care. He shakes his head, bucking his hips up at Derek, trying to throw him off. 

Derek is a tree. Derek is  _ the  _ tree. Derek is t _ h e t r e e thetree the— _

Derek flips them over, holding Stiles on his chest like a small child. He’s broad. Thick.  _ Tree.  _ He has that horrible homeless robe on. His hand rubs small circles on the small of Stiles’ back. Soothing. It didn’t happen. He’s not there. Everything is fine.

_ Fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. _

He can feel a rumble in Derek’s chest. He’s talking, Stiles knows it, he can feel it. He slowly lifts his head up, watching Derek’s lips, but it’s too dark. He can’t make out the shape. So he does the next best thing, lift his fingertips and press them to Derek’s throat. 

The man pauses, shocked by the coldness. Stiles tries to tell him he’s sorry for that, but he can’t remember how to make words and his heart begins to speed up again in his chest. Derek calms him back down by holding him closer.

He speaks slowly. Even. Stiles focuses on the tingling beneath his fingers, the thudding of Derek’s heart in his chest, the steady rise and fall of his diaphragm with each breath. It’s a silent lullaby.

Stiles’ heart slowly stops clanging like a fire bell. 

He’s safe. He takes a deep breath, relaxing into the curve of Derek’s body.  _ Safe _ .

Derek slowly lifts his hand, tugging Stiles’ fingers away from his throat. He lays his hand in Stiles’ palm, signing slowly, allowing enough time for Stiles’ tired fingers to feel each lump and bump. 

_ ‘Y-O-U  A-R-E O-K.’ _

For the first time in a long time, sleep comes easy.

____

Stiles wakes without dirt in his mouth or pine needles in his hair. He’s still on Derek’s chest, strong arms wrapped around him to keep him from floating off in the breeze. He doesn’t open his eyes yet, just lays there and enjoys the warmth of someone else in the bed with him. He hasn’t slept with anyone since Scott-

Stiles winces. He shifts on Derek, hiding his face in the crook of the older man’s neck. It’s itchy there. Scratches up his cheeks. Derek doesn’t shave regularly, instead he lets his beardystubble grow out a little and keeps it perfectly trimmed around the edges. 

Stiles thinks it’s funny. He always tries to make lumberjack jokes to hide the fact that he’s jealous he can’t grow facial hair and always looks like he’s twelve.

Derek’s arms tighten around him, making sure he doesn’t fall off. The rise and fall of Derek’s chest is regular, but not shallow. Stiles guesses that means he’s very well awake, and probably knows Stiles is awake too. If that’s the case, Derek doesn’t bother moving.

Derek smells like maple syrup and sunshine. It’s sharp. Tingly. Stiles wonders if he’s allergic to whatever shampoo Derek uses because it’s making his head feel weird when Derek’s phone vibrates in his pocket. He nudges Stiles to sit up, and the boy does. 

He scoots off of Derek, sitting to the side. Criss-cross applesauce, spoons in the bowl.

He watches Derek answer the phone, run a hand through his hair, smile so wide a little dimple pops up on his cheek. Stiles wants to touch it. He also wants to know the sign for dimple. He wants to tell everyone about that dimple, he wants to shout it from the rooftop, but the closest he can get now is sign. 

Stiles lifts his hands, trying to get Derek’s attention. Derek waves him off, pointing at the phone. Stiles huffs and crosses his arms, pouting at the man. Derek rolls his eyes and smiles warmly at Stiles before he pushes himself up from the bed.

Derek runs his free hand along the top of Stiles’ head, cupping the back of his neck before he nods towards the door. Stiles nods a little and flashes Derek a small smile, understanding that some conversations need to be held in privacy.

Stiles can’t hear, but he’s gotten pretty damn good at lipreading, if he says so himself. Not to toot his own horn or anything, but  _ toot toot! _

Derek laughs at whoever is on the other end of the line as he turns. He leaves the room. 

He leaves Stiles.

Stiles tries his best not to let it bother him too much. 

He gets out of bed and makes it up like he’s supposed to. He combs his hair and pulls on new clothes. He even manages to put the dirty ones in the hamper like he’s supposed to. Stiles goes down the hall and brushes his teeth while he sings the alphabet two times in his head like he’s supposed to. He even tidies up his room and grabs his backpack before heading down the hall.

He slowly makes his way towards the kitchen, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet while he goes. Derek is there when he walks in, back to Stiles. Stiles scrunches up his nose as he sniffs at the air, but he can’t smell anything cooking.

It’s not like Derek to hang out in the kitchen without food. Stiles’ stomach grumbles in a suspicious agreement.

Stiles lets out this little noise to get his attention. Derek quickly stops what he’s doing and turns around. And. Oh. 

There’s a girl behind him. Her head is tilted back. She’s pressed up against the counter. They were kissing.

The only thing Stiles can think to do is turn around, walk back through the living room, and head up the stairs. His feet move on their own, carrying him down the hall, leading him back to  ~~ safety  ~~ his room.

He steps into his room, shuts the door, and turns the lock. He sinks down into the corner. Badbadbad words float around him, smelly and bright. They swirl around and around Stiles’ head, making him all dizzy and nauseous.

_ Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. _

Stiles wraps his arms around his legs. His eyes burn. They’re going to leak, he knows it. He can’t hold it in, but he doesn’t want to make any sounds. He doesn’t want them to know. It hurts his throat not to be loud, but Stiles clenches his jaw and hides his face in his knees.

Derek had touched him so gently, had held him all night, had chased all the bad things away and fought back the darkness so Stiles could sleep. Maybe Stiles had read into the situation too far. Maybe Derek was just being nice.

~~ Maybe Peter put him up to it. Maybe they were working together to fix the unfixable kid. ~~

Stiles sniffles, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He takes a few breaths to steady himself before he gets up and heads to Peter’s study. Class doesn’t stop just because Stiles’ world is crumbling around him. And maybe another stupid essay can help Stiles keep his mind from spinning with badbadbad thoughts.

Peter is waiting for him when he enters. He lifts his hands, ready to sign, when he falters. He examines Stiles face before he tilts his head, tapping his chin with a Y-shaped hand.

_ ‘What’s wrong?’ _

Stiles flaps a hand around to signal the general fuckery that is his life. Peter nods and makes C’s with his hands, moving them in a flat circle.  _ Class.  _ Then he does the thumb-chin-flick that Derek did the other day, just with less vindictiveness.  _ Not.  _

_ ‘Class is canceled.’ _

Stiles stares at him in confusion but doesn’t protest as Peter starts to remove his backpack from his shoulders and sets it down on the floor. He motions for Stiles to follow him, and he does. Their feet thud across the hallway as they walk. 

Stiles watches the empty picture frames jiggle and hide as they go. It’s dark in the house except for the light that streams through the open windows.

Stiles is glad Peter isn’t forcing him to communicate. He doesn’t know what he’d say.

It’s sticky hot outside. Stiles regrets agreeing to no classes as soon as Peter guides him out into the backyard. It only takes seconds for his shirt to stick to him. His nice clean shirt he  _ just  _ put on. 

Stiles tries his best not to make it too obvious that he’s uncomfortable while he scratches at his side. Peter stops walking once they’re a good distance from the house. Stiles wonders if this is all part of some murderous plan.

Peter signs slowly so Stiles can understand everything. Stiles nods when he knows the words, and he shakes his head and asks Peter to repeat what he doesn’t know. Peter doesn’t get mad at anything, even when Stiles gets distracted by a bird landing a few feet from them and stops watching Peter’s hands. He just taps Stiles on the shoulder and continues on.

Now Stiles is really freaked out. He’s totally about to be murdered. Peter dragged him out into the woods, befriended him, gained his father’s trust, and now he’s going to kill him. 

_ ‘I don’t want to force you to share things with me, Stiles. That was my job before, yes, but now I’m supposed to be teaching you. Guiding you. Helping you adjust to your new lifestyle. I don’t want you to feel like you have to share private things with me just because I’m your teacher and psychologist. But you can, if you want to. Do you understand?’ _

Stiles nods his head. He understands, but he doesn’t want to be there anymore. He can feel the tears welling up in his eyes and he just wants to  _ leave. _ It’s like there’s this huge bag in his head that holds back all the badbadbad things. The pressure on the bag gets greater and greater until it rips and everything gushes out. He can’t control it.

He lifts his hands up, signing spastically. He messes up some of the words and doesn’t get the structure quite right all the time. But Peter just nods along, his eyes wide and impressed. He didn’t teach Stiles all of that vocabulary. Derek did.  _ Fucking Derek. _

_ ‘It’s the same story, different cast, slightly different scenario. It doesn’t even matter. In a hundred years we’ll all be dead and there will be no one to remember us by, and some fuck-up kid’s emotions aren’t going to mean shit.’ _

Peter doesn’t even care that he signed  _ assistant  _ instead of  _ poop. _ He just watches. 

Stiles tells him everyfreakingdetail about the car crash. How Scott pushed him away, told him to move on. How could he justmoveon from his mother’s death? 

Stiles tells him about the snakes that crawled inside his head, haunted every step, made the simplest things impossible. 

He tells him about Derek and signing and how he left him this morning and the girl and how it makes his insides feel like they’re caving in when he thinks about it and Peter just nodnodnods and lets him fuck up the signs and tries to understand. Rainrainrainrain pours down Stiles’ face as he signs, nearly drowning him.

Stiles signs until his throat hurts from crying and there is no feeling in his hands. Dr. Peter leaves him there to cry. He disappears. Stiles didn’t see where he went. He doesn’t see anything but smokey flames of anger and disgust.   

 

* * *

 

Derek was four when his little brother was born.

His mommy was so happy to have him, a little boy who shared Derek’s nose and Laura’s curly hair. He was healthy. Happy. They got to take him home right on schedule.

Baby Noah was two years old when he got sick. High fever. Constant crying. Spinal Meningitis. Side effects: death.

Only, baby Noah didn’t die. He got all better, but he had to wear these silly colorful plastic things on his ears all the time. Noah didn’t talk with his voice. Mommy taught him how to talk with his hands. Mommy taught everyone how to sign with their hands. They learned  _ ‘milk’  _ and  _ ‘mommy’  _ and  _ ‘train’  _ . Baby Noah was happy and healthy and everything was okay.

Derek was sixteen when his family burnt to death.

Christmas was being held at Peter’s house that year. Derek was sick this time. He kept coughing, keeping the family awake. Peter had taken him and his sister downstairs so they could watch The Lion King without disturbing the others sleeping in the living room. Derek fell asleep, curled up on the couch. When he woke up, there were alarms screaming in his ear and he was tootootoo hot.

The thick grey smoke smothered him, stealing all the space in his lungs where the air was supposed to go. Everything was shielded in a veil of darkness, the smoke swallowing everything it could touch with its greedy little fingers. The ceiling was on fire. Derek stumbled around blindly, his eyes watering too much for him to see. He cried out for his sisteruncleLauraPeter.

He heard the windows leading out crack and splinter. The flames made an evil hissing sound, forcing Derek further back into the house. He couldn’t see. Where was Laura? Peter? MomdadgrandmaNoah?

A hand grabbed ahold of his shirt, yanking him away from his hiding spot. Peter dragged a screaming Derek towards the wall. Laura was already outside the window, reaching in to help pull Derek up and out as Peter hoisted him up. Peter crawled out last. 

Derek could hear screaming, cries for help. His mom was calling out his name, over and over. He could hear his little cousin crying. His Noah was screaming in pain.

There was a loud explosion. Flames engulfed the entire house. The gas cylinders overheated. After that, it was silent. Only the crackling of the flames answered Derek’s frantic calls to his family.

Derek was almost seventeen when he met Kate.

She was tall. Blonde. Skinny. She had an amazing body and laugh and smile. Derek was in love with her. She made him forget about the fire, stealing the heat from his skin with only her hands. She made him better. He wasn’t afraid anymore. He had her. He had his love.

Derek was eighteen when he found out Kate had been cheating on him.

It was his graduation party. He saw the guy show up. He didn’t know him, but he didn’t know half the people there. It was by accident that he stumbled into the bathroom to find Kate on her knees, eyes closed, mouth open, readyreadyready.

She had been seeing him all along. Before she even met Derek. The heartbreak felt like nothing he had ever experienced before. Cold hands wrapped around his heart and squeezed, chilling him like Kate used to. Holding her was the only thing that mattered in the world. Her long blonde hair. The way she would laugh at his lame jokes, just to make him smile. The way her eyes would crinkle up when she was trying not to cry during the sad part of a movie. 

She had been sharing it all with someone else. The whole time. Every  _ I love you _ . Every  _ Forever, I promise.  _ It was all repeated over and over to someone else.

Derek vowed to never let anyone else in. He left homePeterLaura. He moved across the country to go to college.

Derek was twenty when he met Stiles Stilinski.

He had just come home, depressed and stressed over the constant nightmares surrounding the fireKatefire. There was a boy in the kitchen. His kitchen. He looked like Noah. It had to be Noah. He had to make sure it was real, it was him, he wasn’t asleep.

The boy who turned around was  _ not  _ Noah. He had his mother’s eyes, though. Honey brown and full of too many emotions to count. That threw him off a little.

Stiles was deaf. Stiles wasn’t Noah, but he had his mother’s eyes. Stiles lost his mother when he was young. Stiles lost his hearing a few years later. Stiles lost his best friend moments after. 

His uncle Peter had been working for  _ years  _ on Stiles, trying to rebuild him. He said Derek made more progress with the boy in weeks than he did all that time.

Stiles, as hard as Derek tried to keep him away, was slowly infiltrating all of his systems. And he didn’t want to fight it. Stiles felt like  _ home. _

He taught Stiles how to sign. He held Stiles through his panic attacks and his nightmares. He wiped away the tears and made sure everything was okay.

Derek was twenty when he burnt Stiles up.

It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t. A friend from college had called, said he had a present for Derek, it was on the porch. The present wasn’t a present. It was Kate. His friend had met Kate at a bar. Derek was in the picture of her lockscreen. 

Kate had weaseled her way into Derek’s house, uninvited, and he was  _ not  _ going to let her do anything to him again. He yelled. Got all in her face. But then she kissed him. And Stiles.  _ Stiles. _

His face was broken. Derek watched as everything inside the boy crumpled down into dust. Everything Derek and his uncle had worked so hard on building, ruined. Burnt to the ground.

Stiles left the Hale house shortly after the incident. Peter insisted it was no longer a safe environment for him. Derek had no place to argue.

It felt like losing his family all over again.

 

* * *

 

Kira is happy to have Stiles back at school. She waits for him after classes, gushing about this guy she’s been seeing and letting him borrow her notebooks for social studies and physics to catch up on the notes he missed. The interpreter is back on the job, slowly signing along during the lectures, but now Stiles knows more signs, and it aggrivates him when she uses the wrong words for things.

Sign Language is different from spoken English, but his interpreter doesn’t bother re-wording things for Stiles. She tries to keep up with the teacher instead of translating the lectures, and trying to make sense of her jumbled signs makes Stiles’ head spin.

It’s excruciating, and nothing like how Peter would teach. Some part of Stiles wants to go back, but the bigger, stronger part shuts that thought out and seals the door.

At lunch Lydia made Kira translate nearly every detail about her forever on-again-off-again relationship with Jackson, a member of the lacrosse team. Not just  _ any  _ member, Kira added, as if Stiles didn't already know.  _ Team Captain. _

Stiles just nods along when he has to, not really paying attention anymore. He stares at the key lime pie on his tray. It's bright artificial green. Stiles wonders what the key has to do with limes. Did limes even taste like this? Stiles thought limes were just green lemons people put on beer bottles instead of glasses of water.

After a few moments, Lydia swats at his arm. There is a crease of worry between her eyebrows. She eyes Stiles curiously before her lips begin to move. Stiles is way too tired to deal with lip reading today. 

His first day back at a real school is killing him. Literally.

Stiles looks at Kira for help. She just shakes her head and bites her lip. Kira took ASL classes as her foreign language at her old school, but apparently whatever Lydia is saying is way out of her league.  ~~ Stiles wishes Derek was there to translate. ~~

Lydia huffs a sigh. Her hair bounces with the effort. She pulls a notebook from her backpack and lays it on the lunch table, writing down what she said with a sparkly pen. 

_ ‘I just wanted to talk to you. Tell you about what you've missed here. You need friends here, Stiles. Kira, Jackson, and I can be that for you. It'll be fun.’ _

Stiles snorts softly at that and shakes his head. Jackson helped get him kicked off of the team. Jackson kept Scott from coming with him to see his mom. Jackson is just as much to blame for his lack of friends as Scott is.

Stiles thinks about writing that this is a pretty messed up way to bring them closer together, her talking about her boyfriend. But there was this sense that the comment would be wasted on a person like Lydia, so he doesn't say anything. Lydia is a very determined person. She knows what she wants and she  _ always  _ gets it.

So stiles nods at Lydia. Lydia nods at Stiles. They sit there like that, nodding back and forth, affirming everything and nothing all at once.

____

 

Three days later they got their first thunderstorm of the winter. Stiles sits in class, watching through the glass windows as the rain clouds blacken the sky and burst open. Huge, hard drops plummet to the ground. Stiles feels itchy. His skin wants to peel right off and crawl into a tight little closet and not come out until the rain stops. He can’t focus on the lesson. He can't even remember what class he's in.

His vision swims. People morph into their desks and their pencils become part of their hands, sewn into the muscles and tendons. Stiles doesn't ask to be excused. He runs out of the classroom, straight to the nurse's office.

The sick words crawl along the walls, eating each other. They morph into bigger, badder things that don't even look like sick words anymore. They look like death. Absolute death. 

He can't make any sounds. His mouth doesn't move the way he wants to, but the little nurse behind her desk recognizes him as soon as he walks in. Her spider eyes lock on Stiles, sad and knowing. She sits in her web, the death words stuck to her in all different places.

Stiles’ bottom lip quivers. He can feel the rain pound on the roof, trying to get to him. It wants him to drown. It wants him. He's shaking as he walks into the office, stumbling past the spider nurse and heading for the cots. Stiles trips over his sneakers, catching himself on the curtain keeping one of the cots secluded from the rest. The person inside jumps up, socked feet on the floor.

Stiles can't catch his breath. He tries to tell the guy he's sorry, but he can't. His lips don't belong to him anymore. They're pressed tight. Afraid.

The person loops their arms beneath Stiles’ armpits and hoists him up. He's settled on the bed. 

Stiles’ heart hammers in his chest, trying to escape the confines of his ribs. His hands tremble at his sides, slowly clenching and unclenching into fists. The world tilts and spins around him, trying to buck Stiles into the void he fell into that night.

He can't hold on. Stiles slips. Darkness clouds his vision and he's somewhere else. Somewhere safe and dark and warm. He doesn't want to wake up.

 

* * *

 

Scott floated through the year. He wasn't attached to his own body, simply a spectator to his life. 

He woke up. Went to school. Ate lunch with his friendsteammatesacquaintances. Managed to somehow get a girl to want to spend time with him. Went to lacrosse practice. Repeat. 

He closed in on himself, trapping his grief within him and locking up. The key was lost. He was a treasure chest full of fake fortune.

That morning Scott was wearing the worn red sweatshirt he always slept in when he was sick. Nurse Mom said it wasn't a real sickness, he didn't have a fever or any symptoms. Regular Mom said it was sadness eating away at his happy. 

Scott didn’t know what it was, but he did  _ not  _ want to go to school. Not with Stiles there again. Scott had avoided him the few weeks he was back at school the first time, but there was no way he could keep that gig up the second time around. He was doomed.

Scott didn’t go to first hour. He didn’t go to any hour, for that matter. As soon as he got to school, he headed straight for the nurse’s office. Chet Baker played from her little radio, voice rumbling in the background as she hung up the phone. She waved at Scott as he entered.

“Come here,” she said when she noticed him. Scott approached her slowly, nervous. She didn’t look pleased. He put his hands in his back pockets as she leaned forward and looked up at him. “Sheriff Stilinski said he told you.” 

A wave of guilt washed over Scott, cold and heavy. It pulled his arms down towards the ground.

“Yeah,” He said. “He did.”

She seemed oddly satisfied, like Scott had just confirmed an old theory of hers. She nodded to herself. She leaned back in her chair and turned up her radio, effectively tuning him out. “Go on.”

The nurse decorated her office for Halloween, and never took it all down after. There were purple bat lights strung on the wall near the cots, flashing purple. Scott collapsed into one of them, shutting the curtain harshly behind him. His face was pressed into the pillow. The fabric warmed the air as he breathed it in. 

He let himself cry there until the mild flickering of the lights had coated him with a strange sort of numbness that he confused with acceptance. Scott dozed off to the sound of Chet Baker softly crooning and the air conditioner humming in the background.

A strange, blubbering sort of cry jolted him out of his daze. The door to the nurse’s office slammed shut. The curtain wobbled on its rack. 

Scott sat up in his cot, sleepy and confused. What kind of noise was that?

Suddenly his wall of protection from the rest of the school was ripped aside. Someone had tripped and grabbed onto the curtain to keep himself from hitting the tiled floor. 

_ Stiles. _

 

* * *

 

Stiles wakes to a bright light shining in his face. The little spider nurse peels open his eyelids, probably trying to see if Stiles was concussed in the fall. He doesn’t remember hitting his head. Isn’t amnesia a side effect of a concussion? The nurse pats his cheek before scurrying away again.

Scott stands to the side of Stiles’ cot. He’s slouched over, eyes fixed straight ahead and far off into the distance. He doesn’t even blink as Stiles shifts to face him. Slowly, Scott lifts a hand up to his chest to rub a small S-shape there. 

_ ‘Sorry.’ _

Stiles flips him off and stands, walking out of the room. Scott grabs him by the wrist and yanks him back. He pulls too hard, and Stiles falls to the ground. Scott looks shocked at the action for a moment before he thrusts forward a piece of paper. It’s wrinkled and ripped. Stiles guesses Scott pulled one at random from his backpack. How thoughtful.

_ ‘We need to talk.’ _

Stiles shakes his head. He pushes Scott away and scrambles to his feet. He’s out of there before Scott can grab him and throw him to the ground again.

 

* * *

 

Stiles was really good at ignoring Scott. He saw Stiles at lunch, and he kept turning the other way. He sat with Lydia at a table across the room from Scott. He couldn’t stop seeing him. He was everywhere. In the bathroom, late to class, in the parking lot after school. It was slowly driving Scott insane.

Scott wanted to talk to him. Scott wanted to tell Stiles it wasn’t his fault, he shouldn’t hate him, he did this to himself. But Stiles didn’t want to see him, much less hear his apology. Was hear an okay thing to say to him? Did Scott fuck up when he said he wanted to  _ talk  _ to Stiles?

Scott went with that. It wasn’t him, it was what he said. Or wrote. Whatever.

 

* * *

 

 

Two whole weeks after he came back home, two whole weeks after not thinking about DerekKatekissing, Stiles dreams of Derek. 

They’re walking down the road in the middle of the desert. Cacti wave hello to them as they pass. Stiles waves back and Derek laughs. It’s warm. Sunny. White flakes fall from the sky. Derek walks a few feet in front of Stiles, leading him somewhere unknown.

Stiles tugs on Derek’s sleeve to get his attention before his hands start moving. 

‘ _ How is it snowing here?’ _

Derek smiles his dimpled smile. He shrugs. His hands move slowly, beautifully. Stiles wants to touch them. 

_ ‘It’s not snow, Stiles. It’s ash.’ _

Stiles nods. Of course it is ash. Ash rains in a dream desert all the time. They keep walking, but Stiles has this uncanny feeling that he is being watched. He tries to turn away from the path, but he can't. His feet move without his permission, totally at the will of Derek.

The person watching him is way too close to his back. He can feel them breathing down his neck, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. Stiles wants to run away. He wants to call out to Derek to stop, turn around, help him. But he can't make a sound.

Stiles feels he cold hard press of metal to his cheek. His heart hammers in his chest. There is a  _ bang!  _ of pressure against his cheek. Derek stops walking. A rose blooms over his shoulder, blood staining his shirt a dark red. Derek falls to the ground. Stiles is released from his spell. He turns around quickly, but the gunman is gone. In its place stands a vast expanse of curvy, wet pavement.

Stiles is driving. His hands are tied to the steering wheel. His mother’s voice sings to him from the radio, soft and sweet. She is singing his lullaby. He hadn’t slept in days. He is so tired.

_ Stiles closed his eyes for a second, and then he was hit. _

His eyes snap open and Stiles instinctively pushes down on an invisible gas pedal. His breathing is ragged, coming out in short, shallow puffs. He can't get any air in. 

_ Nightmare.  _ He reminds himself.  _ You’re okay. Derek’s okay. _

The thought of Derek sends a whole new wave of emotions through his body. He’s sadmadconfused. His heart thuds painfully in his chest while his head tells him to justmoveon. Stiles sits up slowly, staring down at his lap. He doesn’t know what to do, and there’s no dream Derek to take his hand and pull him around.

_ He’s lost. _

Stiles is lost. He’s lost. 

Scott tries to corner him at school, lips flapping uselessly as he tries to talk to him. He can’t stand it. Scott takes Kira away from him. He’s the one she was seeing before, and he asked her out. Now she sits with him at lunch. Lydia followed Kira, and now she sits with Jackson. Stiles sits in the library with the  _ stupid  _ interpreter. Alone. And then there are the teachers who have  _ ZERO  _ consideration for his deafness and won’t ever pause when he asks or repeat themselves so his interpreter can sign it all for once and fuckfuckfuck, he can’t do this anymore.

He wants to call Derek. He needs to call Derek. But he can’t stop seeing him with  _ her.  _ Of course he’s with her. Stiles feels like nothing. 

He lays on his bed, clutching his knees to his chest, breathing shakily and staring out the window. Derek’s with her. The girl with the long blonde hair and the bright red lips and the tiny little hands that get to hold his heart and it’s notfairatall because Stiles got to have a taste of what she gets and now he wantsawholebite.

Stiles doesn’t know how he manages to find his phone in the dark, but suddenly it’s in his hand. His fingers move without his permission, unlocking his phone and navigating their way through the maze of apps. His thumb hovers over the number for PeterDerek’s landline. He’s weak and shaky and his tears blur the world around him as he tries to stop his fingers from moving. He presses call. 

Stiles sits up in the bed, cradling the phone in his hands and trying to swallow the hiccupping sobs forcing their way past his lips. The screen changes as someone picks up. Stiles can’t hear anything.  _ He can’t hear anything.  _ He hangs up.

Stiles slowly pushes himself up, scooting out of the bed. He wanders to his fathermother’s room. Her things are in a box in the closet. His dad hid them away after Dr. Hale said it would expedite the grieving process. 

Stiles pulls out the box and goes back to his room. He sits on his bed, pulling out a tiny silk square of her pajama pants. Stiles gently lays it down on the mattress. Stiles lines up her perfume, hairbrush, tiny jewelry box. Stiles pulls out his mother’s candle. She would light it on Sunday mornings to try and cover up the smell of John’s burnt breakfast. Stiles tumbles to the floor beside his bed and sets the candle on the bedside table. He pulls a lighter from the drawer there and ignites SundayMorningBreakfastFixer.

He tries to stand, but his legs can’t support his weight and he falls to the ground. Stiles crawls to the bathroom on his hands and knees, moving slowly so he can feel the burn against his knees at the friction. He pulls off his sweats, getting them tangled around his ankles and probably ripping them in the process of getting them off. He can’t find the energy to care. Stiles turns the water on in the shower. Hot.

The reflection stares at Stiles through the mirror. His eyes are pools of muddy water surrounded by purple petals of sleeplessness. His nose is big and red like a balloon full of hair and snot. His ears are dead trees poking their rotting leaves out of the side of his head. He is locked in the mirror and there is no door out.

Stiles uses his shirt to wipe the steam from the mirror. It starts to bead up on his armschestthighs, clinging to the little hairs there. He feels a soft, delicate hand on his shoulder. 

His mother smiles at him through the mirror, brushing the beads of condensation from his skin. Stiles slumps forward, head hanging low. His mom smells of warm cinnamon and Sunday mornings. Her smell wraps itself around him in a blanket. He’s a butterfly in a cocoon. Safe. He’s safe. She’s here again and he can go back to bed and get some sleep and everything will be okay.

Stiles lifts his head to look at her again, but she’s gone. 

The sugary cinnamon smell is burning. Stiles panics. He has to get her back. Stiles throws open the mirror, revealing the medicine cabinet behind it. His mother’s pretty pills are still in their little orange containers. She got them to help her sleep when the chemotherapy made her dreams melt into nightmares. 

Stiles takes a handful in his hands. Tiny blue spheres. He swallows them dry, then turns the tap to take a quick drink from the faucet. The pills claw their way down his throat. His mother flickers in his vision.

_ Christmas morning. Stiles sits beneath a big tree, white lights glowing around him. His mother sits beside him, helping him unwrap the presents. _

_ “It’s okay Stiles, the paper is meant to be torn apart.” _

_ Stiles shakes his head, letting his mother do it herself. He gets an airplane. Three coloring books. The really big box of crayons. A Batman kite. Two new comic books. His mother smiles. His dad sits on the couch, recording it all through his cameraface. _

Flash.

_ White. White. White. His mother’s skin is sickly thin, the blue butterfly veins pumping frantically beneath it. Needles bite at her skin. Tubes steal her mommy juices and replace them with burning hospital ones. Stiles doesn’t like it. He wants her to come home. She promises soon. Soon. Soon. _

The pills bang through his veins like angry beetles. They rip him open from the inside, eating his garbage bones and sewer thoughts. The snakes in his ears wake up, angry. They rattle against his head, trying to get out. They bite him. They sear through his brain, tails flicking in frustration.

The tendons in his hands tense up and relax, repeating as he grips the edge of the counter. 

His mother reappears in the mirror. Her lips are moving. Stiles can’t hear her. He drops his head, groaning loudly as the pounding in his temples intensifies. The snakes curl around his brain and squeeze, now as strong as pythons in the Amazon. 

Stiles stares at the thin scars lining each of his wrists. One on each side where the needles injected themselves in his mom to feed off of her.

There’s a tiny little scar on his chest where he tried to cut too deep in the seventh grade. Her first deathiversary. Her heart stopped beating. Stiles was there. It just stopped. Stiles was too scared to do anything. Scott needed him. His dad needed him.

Stiles lifts his head back up, his vision swimming. The snakes have gotten ahold of his eyes. Black holes open up in front of him, swallowing everything. He’s sweating. Too warm.

The smell of burning Sunday Morning sto-

 

* * *

 

The bathroom door swings open.

Derek sees the empty pill bottles. Derek sees the crumpled Stiles on the floor, lips blue and eyes blown wide open.

He screams louder than the fire alarms blaring overhead.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

Derek saw him at the hospital. He showed up every single day, fidgety and awkward as he moved around the waiting room. The kid would walk in, glance around the waiting room, then pace around the nurse’s station. He would sit, cross his ankles, check his watch a few times, and then stand and pace back towards the nurse’s station.

Derek watched him with a bored sort of interest. He had a habit of making up stories for everyone who sat around him, but this guy was different. He wasn’t sad, anxiously awaiting the news of his father after a heart attack. He wasn’t a nervous wreck, waiting to hear if his wife had a healthy baby. He was just _there_.

The guy came in every day, glanced nervously around, then stood awkwardly by the front desk and talked to a nurse. He would hang around in the waiting room for a few minutes, then leave again. One time, Peter was there when the boy came in to do his daily routine.

Peter nodded his head at the boy. Steam curled out of his coffee cup as he took a sip. His voice was soft, urgent. A secret only meant for Derek’s ears. “McCall.”

 _McCall._ Derek knew that name. Stiles managed to call it out once when he had a nightmare. Peter told him about Scott and the accident a few nights ago, the two of them huddled over a magazine as they waited for another update on Stiles’ condition. _He’s_ the one who fucked Stiles up so badly.

Derek’s hands curled into fists at his sides and he pushed himself up out of the chair. Peter cleared his throat in a quiet warning, but he didn’t try to stop Derek from leaving.

“Don’t get arrested.” Peter muttered, sipping again from his cup.

Derek took that as a sign that it was okay for him to do whatever he wanted.

As usual, Scott waved goodbye to the nurse at the desk and turned to leave. Derek followed him out into the rain, grabbing the boy by the back of the shirt and shoving him flush against the back of a minivan. White smiling faces of an alien family stared at Derek from the back window, the stickers morphing under the raindrops into something terrifying. He tried to ignore them as he focused on the squirming teenager trapped against the car.

“What the fuck?” Scott hissed, wiggling free of Derek’s grasp and whirling around to face him. His eyes met Derek’s chest and the color drained from his cheeks. Scott slowly lifted his head, eyes wide and ringed with fear. His voice was wobbly, afraid, but he still kept up that dumbass bravado.

“What the fuck, dude?”

Derek took in deep, shaky breaths as he tried to calm himself down. His fists shook at his sides. He just wanted to talk. That’s all. Just a talk. But Scott seemed to think differently.

The boy lifted his hands suddenly to shove at Derek’s chest and make a break for it, screaming loudly.

“Help! Somebody, hel-” Scott grunted as Derek grabbed him again, wrapping his arms around the teenager and dragging him to Peter’s car.

Derek threw Scott against the side of the Camaro, watching their reflection do a backward dance on the car’s side. Scott hit the door at an awkward angle, his elbow colliding with the window as he let out a pained little noise.

Derek spoke coldly, his voice low. The sound swirled around in the thunder, almost inaudible. “You did this to him.”

Scott suddenly straightened up as realization dawned across his face. His eyebrows lowered as he shook his head. “What are you- Stiles? I didn’t do anything. He did this to _me._ ”

"It's not about you!" Derek yelled, shoving at Scott's shoulders. He gulped in deep lungfuls of air, chest heaving, fingers clenched into trembling fists at his sides. He could see Peter having to bail his ass out of jail for harassing a teenage kid in the parking lot, so he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to reel in his anger.

"It's not about you." He repeated quieter, spitting the words out like venom through clenched teeth.

Scott stood there, emotionless, working his jaw. He stared up at the taller man, gaze flicking over the frame in a gesture Derek could only define as defensive. Scott was sizing him up, trying to see where he would strike next.

"Fucking hell, McCall! Say something! It's not his fault, you jackass. It's not his fault that he's deaf. It's not his fault that people are ignorant and don't understand and make fun of him." Derek paused, shaking his head furiously, dark eyes narrowed as he met Scott’s gaze. "You- You-"

"I did what was best for _me_." The other snapped, turning away. Scott glared at the floor, stalking away from the vehicle and heading to his own car. "I don't know anything? It's not just me? Please, you know nothing about my life. I did what was best for me."

“What was best for you?” Derek groaned loudly, lifting his hands to rake his fingers through his hair. “Jesus! What was best for you, huh? So what was best for you was leaving him? Making him go through all of this alone? What kind of twisted bullshit is that, Scott?”

Scott didn’t turn around. He kept walking, shirt sticking to his wet skin and hair a damp mess on his head. He slammed his door shut as he climbed into the car.

He left Derek in the parking lot to fume alone.

 

* * *

 

The emergency room is full of smoke. Smoke clinging to his dad’s hat. Smoke curling from his mouth as he talks. Smoke floating from the gun in his holster. Smoke filtering around Stiles’ head, coating his throat and sitting heavy on his tongue.

He chokes on it and sputters, gagging on the stench, trying to get it out of his nose.

Melissa drapes Stiles in necklaces of plastic tubes and brightly colored wires. She decorates the room with plastic bags full of hospital fluid and pricks him with a needle.

One time, in a panic, Stiles tried to pull the needles out. Melissa just taped them back down and flashed Stiles a little frown, her lips tugging down in disappointment. She patted his hand once before she turned and called for the two deputies stationed outside his door. After that, his arms are trapped to the bed at his sides.

_His dad visits him all the time between shifts. He brings Stiles cards from the officers at the station. He brings him flowers from kids at school._

His dad doesn’t come to see him. He stands outside the room sometimes, eyes rimmed with red and swollen from crying. Sometimes, he glances in at his son, and Stiles expects to see anger etched into the hard lines of his face, but the anger never comes. He looks worried and hurt, and somehow, that’s even worse. Stiles recognizes him between his waves of consciousness. There are no balloons. No flowers. No cards. No relics from home.

_The nurses are smiling at him as they make their rounds. They feed him applesauce until the stitches in his stomach have dissolved, then they start to move to more solid foods. He gets his bandages changed daily. They wrap around his cheststomachhips. They’re looped around his head. Clouds sit against his ears, big and puffy. Stiles laughs. It tickles. Medicine dripsdripsdrips down the tubes, into his blood. It makes him happysleepy. He gladly accepts._

The nurses who check on him have hard faces. No one has a stethoscope. No one has strings on their pants or their shirts or their shoes. He can’t be trusted with anything he could use to harm himself or others. He tries to sign, tries to move his hands, tries to tell him he didn’t want to _die_ , he just wanted to _sleep_ , but he can’t. Stiles is stuck in his bed, strapped down.

Melissa comes sometimes. She pats Stiles’ hand and flashes a warm smile and makes Stiles feel just a little bit less alone. But then she’s swept away in a flurry of hospital scrubs, and the other nurses don’t pay Stiles much attention.

It must be a trademark of this wing of the hospital. He hears people screaming, their wails bouncing around the hall outside his room. Stiles doesn’t want to stay there. He _really_ doesn’t want to stay there.

He’s poked and prodded and fed mushmushmush. They check his vitals, clean out the bedpan and the plastic bag of pee. They put something in his IV to make him fall back asleep. He can’t fight it.

_C-O-N-D-U-C-T-I-V-E  H-E-A-R-I-N-G L-O-S-S._

_His favorite nurse writes on a notepad for him._

_C-A-U-S-E-S : E-A-R I-N-F-E-C-T-I-O-N  , T-R-A-U-M-A , F-L-U-I-D- B-U-I-L-D U-P._

_Trauma is circled in a bright red pen. She explains how when he flew from the car, he landed in a tree. Stiles nods, he remembers that. The tree tried to catch him but accidentally poked through his tummy. The tree also tried to protect his head. A branch punctured his eardrum. He also got a skull fracture._

_Stiles giggles at the pictures she draws. She sighs and lets him go back to sleep._ _He is released two days later._

Two days before Christmas, Stiles is permitted sane enough to be kicked out of the hospital. The nurses finally take away his restraints, but no one watches as he flexes his fingers. No one watches as he signs sloppily, trying his best to make them understand.

Melissa comes back to wheel Stiles down the long hallway and into the waiting room. Stiles scrunches up his eyebrows in confusion when he doesn’t see his dad. His dad isn’t there to pick him up. Peter is. Stiles lifts his hands to ask, but he’s silenced by Peter’s withering gaze.

Stiles doesn’t comment as Melissa hands him off to Peter. For once, he’s completely silent, his hands tucked between his legs.

He is taken back to Peter’s house, and for a moment, Stiles is blindsided. They take the long way there, which, according to the clock on the car’s dash, is ten minutes longer, and also effectively avoids passing by Stiles’ house. Stiles doesn’t understand why he isn’t going home. He doesn’t understand why his dad isn’t there.

Stiles lifts a hand and waves it around, trying to get Peter’s attention in the rearview mirror, but the man doesn’t turn around. Instead, he turns up the dial on the radio and tightens his grip on the wheel. The music vibrates through Stiles, rattling his bones.

Eventually, they pull up in the Hale’s driveway. Peter cuts the engine, and Stiles feels the car stop shaking. He turns to face Stiles and lifts a hand to circle it near the side of his head, then he points at Stiles and does the thumb-flick motion.  

_‘You’re not crazy.’_

Stiles blinks a few times, his eyelids heavy, and shakes his head a little to clear it. Of course he’s not crazy. Peter just nods at him and gets out of the car, leaving Stiles inside.

Stiles looks out the window at the Hale house, watching the motion-sensor lights flick off on the porch as Peter disappears inside. He bites down on his bottom lip, gnawing on the flesh. Derek’s car isn’t in the drive, but Stiles still isn’t sure the coast is clear.

He didn’t want to stay in the hospital any longer, but at least he didn’t have to face Derek after what he’d done.

After a few deep breaths, Stiles slowly clambers out of Peter’s car and follows him inside. Clouds cover the sun, threatening to rain down sadness on them all. As soon as he’s inside, Stiles finds Peter in the kitchen and grabs ahold of his sleeve. He signs quickly, heart fluttering anxiously in his chest.

‘ _Where is my dad?’_

A shadow passes over Peter’s face. It’s as gone as soon as it happens, and Peter is back to his stoic expression again. He sticks his thumb on his forehead, fingers open in a 5-shape, then points at Stiles. He flicks his thumb out from his chin and grits his teeth.

_‘You’re not allowed to see him. You’re supposed to be receiving inpatient treatment downtown, but with all the overcrowding, you’d only be there for a few days.’_

Stiles shakes his head, confused. Not allowed to see him? His own dad? Fuck that, he’s not actually locked up in some psych ward somewhere. Peter just keeps signing, a frown forming on his lips.

_‘A few days isn’t enough. Since you have a history with a pretty good therapist, you were admitted to me instead. You’re lucky.’_

Stiles doesn’t understand how this is lucky. He doesn’t understand why he would go to the suicide ward. He’s not suicidal, he’s really not. He’s just tired. He wanted to get some sleep. He wanted his mother. He thought he would get the best of both worlds. _His mother._

Stiles’ face falls. It’s two days before Christmas. He missed her deathiversary.

Peter walks away from Stiles, disappearing into the house. Stiles just stands in the kitchen, his wounds open for all the dust mites to crawl inside and roam around his body, twisting painfully in his chest. He sucks in a deep breath and closes his eyes.

 _One two three._ Breathe in. _One two three._ Breathe out.

He repeats the mantra a few times until his heart rate slows and he doesn’t feel dust bunnies collecting in his heart.

Stiles wanders to his old room, past the empty picture frames and the sculptures and the rooms he isn’t supposed to step foot in. But when he gets there, his room is set up differently. With a pang of disappointment, he realizes they changed it while he was gone.

The furniture is bolted to the floorwall. The windows have locks on them that require a key. Everything has been removed from his closet. The hangers are gone. Any clothes that don’t have zippers or string-ties are laid out on his bed, but the rest are gone. His door knob doesn’t have a lock on it.

Precautions, Stiles thinks. So he can’t, apparently, try to commit suicide “again”.

Stiles shoves his clothes off his bed and onto the floor. He flops down, not caring about the mess he made. Stiles lays flat on his back. There’s a flower on his dresser. A single balloon. A piece of paper instead of a card.

_Y-O-U   A-R-E   O-K_

____

 

That night, Derek sneaks into Stiles’ room with a bright green mug. Buddy the Elf stares blankly at Stiles, face forever frozen in a hollow smile. Derek hands Stiles the mug. His fingers move slow enough for Stiles to follow.

 _T-E-A._ He circles his pointer finger in the air, then places a thumbs-up handshape on the palm of his other hand and lifts it up.

_‘Tea. Always helps.’_

It tastes like warm pencil shavings, but Stiles doesn’t let Derek know that. He drinks it all down while Derek moves around the room, rearranging his stuff without asking. It must be a nervous thing. Stiles picks up on the way Derek’s broad shoulders are tense, the muscles on his back relaxing for only a few moments at a time. His right hand shifts the flowercardballoon around and around while his left is clenched in a fist at his side.

Stiles forcefully sets down his mug on the bedside table. He only wanted to do it hard enough to make a little sound so Derek would turn around, but he ended up slamming it down too hard and the handle snaps right off. Buddy is now disfigured, an arm and a leg painted on the mug’s handle. Stiles winces and scoots back in his bed, pulling his knees up to his chest and waiting for a storm to brew inside the room.

It never comes.

There’s a hand on his shoulder. A blossom of warmth. Stiles opens an eye to peek up at Derek, whose lips are spread into that dimpled smile. He’s laughing. He signs with one hand. His fingers are beautiful. Stiles wants to touch them. He curls his hands into his pants to keep himself from reaching out for Derek.

_‘It’s okay. I hated that mug. Buddy always scared me.’_

Stiles nods slowly, flashing Derek a tiny smile before he looks away. His mind flashes to DerekKate kissing and his stomach rolls. The storm isn’t in the room, it’s inside Stiles. His stomach is the ship on the choppy waves. Stiles crawls under the covers, laying flat on his back and swallowing. He won’t throw up. He won’t.

The bed beside Stiles dips down after a few moments. Stiles peeks out from under the covers and opens his eyes to darkness. Derek turned off the light. Derek plans on staying the night. Stiles rolls on his side, facing the other man.

Derek grabs Stiles’ hands, placing them over his own as he signs. Stiles knows he’s supposed to try and figure out what the hell Derek is trying to say, but he’s distracted. Derek’s hands are soft and warm and he just wants to—

Stiles tugs Derek’s fingers towards his own, intertwining them beneath the sheets. He sticks two of them up near his mouth, leaving a gentle kiss to the tips of Derek’s pointer and ring finger before his mind catches up to what’s going on. As if it burnt him, Stiles quickly drops Derek’s hand and tries to scoot backward, away from him.

But Derek grabs him, his arms around Stiles’ waist, and pulls him closer instead. He guides Stiles’ head down so it rests on his chest. Derek’s laughing beneath him. The rumble tickles Stiles’ cheek.

Derek rubs his wet fingers on the back of Stiles’ neck before he tangles his hand in Stiles’ hair. They fall asleep like that, tangled together, and when Stiles wakes up the next morning, Derek is still in his bed.

____

Dr. Hale turns on the old, white space heater in the corner, but hands Stiles the hair afghan anyway. The knobs are finicky, and Stiles knows sometimes things get stuck inside the gears, because it’s always either way too hot or too cold. Stiles can’t remember a time it worked properly, but it doesn’t seem to bother Peter, so Stiles doesn’t comment on it.

Stiles sits with his back to the windows. The winter rain hasn’t stopped, and Peter says Stiles is more responsive when he doesn’t see it. Stiles curls into a ball on the couch, clutching a corner of the afghan to his stomach.

Peter takes Stiles’ normal position near the desk. He writes on a dry-erase board for Stiles so it’s easier for the boy to understand and respond properly. Stiles has one of his own on the floor beside the couch. He picked out the red marker. Normally, Peter never lets him choose. The change makes Stiles feel weird.

_‘You’ve had a rough time. I’m happy you’re still here, though.’_

This is where Stiles usually sits, unresponsive, for an hour until his session is over. But his brain is swollen from where the snakes attacked him and his heart feels full of acid and he just wants to make it all _stop._ So he picks up the board, uncaps the marker, and scribbles down a response.

_‘I smelled her.’_

Dr. HalePeter nods, a tiny smile curling at his lip for a second. Stiles can tell he’s pleased that there’s a response today. It warms up his tummy in a tickly feeling. Stiles wants to keep it there forever.

‘ _Can you describe her scent for me?’_

Stiles nods slowly, afraid of shaking up his brain as he sits up. He puts the blanket in his lap and watches the fabric swallow the marker cap.

_‘Cookies. Cinnamon sugar cookies. Happiness. Sunday mornings. It’s her, I smelt it because she was there with me. I smelt it in the car the night-’_

Stiles lets out this strangled, angry noise, and tugs his sleeve down over his hand. He wipes at the board with his sleeve, erasing the last sentence he wrote before showing it to Peter.

Peter frowns. The tiny smile is gone. The warm tummy feeling in Stiles’ tummy is replaced with coldness. Stiles is on top of Mount Everest. He’s trapped in the snow, slowly freezing over, steel arms holding him down so he can’t breathe. He sits, frozen, as Peter writes out a response.

_‘Your mom isn’t here anymore, Stiles. You were smelling the candle. Do you know what happened with the candle?’_

Stiles bobs his head, a good little puppet boy. He remembers the candle. He remembers getting the box of his mother’s things to be closer to her. To feel safe so he could go to sleep without being haunted by DeadDerek and BurningCars.

Peter continues writing. _‘Did you know that beds are highly flammable?’_

Beds? Stiles shrugs a little, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He guesses beds are flammable enough. They’re a bunch of fabric on top of metal. Sounds pretty flammable to Stiles. He doesn’t understand what that has to do with his mother’s candle, though.

Peter must read the confusion on Stiles’ face, because he quickly adds to his board. _‘The candle tipped over, Stiles. Your room caught on fire. Derek and I got there in time to contain the fire to the upstairs and get you out, but you’re lucky Stiles. You could have died. Your room is mostly gone, and so is part of your father’s room and the hallway.’_

That’s why they took the long way here. Peter didn’t want Stiles seeing his house like that. He didn’t want him to know what he had done to his room, to his father’s room, to his mother’s things. _His mother’s things._ Stiles swallows past the lump in his throat, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He rubs at his nose with his sleeve, trying really hard to concentrate on Peter as he writes some more.

_‘The officials thought you set the fire on purpose, but when Derek described how the house smelled, John explained it was a candle. Setting fire to your house and swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills isn’t a good combination, Stiles. Now we know the fire was an accident, but can you tell me anything about the overdose?’_

He doesn’t want to, but Stiles tells him. He tells Peter about the nightmares and the teachers and Scott. He tells him about not sleeping for a while before, and how when this happened in the past he just needed to feel closer to his mom. She made him feel safe enough to drift off.

In the jeep, he had played the cassette tape with his lullaby on it, the one she used to sing to him. He slept. At home, he tried to hold her things. Her brush, her jewelry box, her candle. None of it worked.

Peter nods along, encouraging Stiles to keep going by not moving. He sits there, eyes wide as Stiles writes and erases and writes and erases. Stiles didn't try to kill himself. He tried to get closer to his mom. He tried to feel safe. He tried to get some sleep. He’s not suicidal, he’s exhausted and in need of a good nap.

Dr. Hale pulls a cough drop from his coat pocket, unwraps it, and pops it in his mouth. He rolls it around with his tongue for a minute. Stiles watches as the light changes in the room. It’s beginning to storm outside. A few moments after the lightning, Stiles can feel a dull rumble of thunder pass through his limbs.

Finally, Peter writes a response.

_‘Why are you telling me this now?’_

Stiles swallows, hard. He presses his lips in a thin line and sticks his hands under the afghan. The blanket swallows him up, keeping him warm in its hairy little clutches. Stiles doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why he didn’t tell Peter during his post-funeral sessions or his post-accident sessions or any time between or after.

A few moments later, Peter glances at the clock on the wall. His lips move. Stiles stares blankly at them, not bothering to try and decipher the silent code. With a sigh, Peter gets up and walks out of the room, leaving stiles to sit in silence.

Sinking into the couch, Stiles lets the blanket swallow him up some more. Maybe it would like to keep some of Stiles’ hair. Maybe it would like to keep Stiles.

It doesn’t take long for Derek to find him there, silent, letting the lightning flash along the carpet and the thunder rattle his bones. He kneels in front of Stiles and sets a pair of fuzzy ducky pajamas beside him on the floor. They don’t look like they’d fit Derek, but they’re obviously not Peter’s. Stiles assumes it belonged to a member of Derek’s family.

A member of Derek’s _dead_ family.

Derek reaches forward, his hand stroking the back of Stiles’ head, fingers toying with the short hairs at the nape of his neck. Stiles sighs a little, all but melting into the contact. He lets his eyes flutter shut, only focusing on the feeling of Derek’s hands in his hair, the warmth trickling down his spine and filling his entire body.

Another roll of thunder jolts Stiles from his trance, his eyes snapping open and meeting Derek’s greenish ones. Really, what color are they? Stiles squints and tilts his head to the side, examining the intricate hue of Derek’s irises. Derek just smiles back at him, dropping his hand from Stiles’ head to sign for him.

_‘You want to change into some pajamas? I have a surprise for you downstairs.’_

Stiles just shrugs, not lifting his hands from his lap, because _fuck_ , moving is exhausting. He lets Derek gently pull the blanket off of him. Derek tugs Stiles’ shirt over his head, careful not to get it caught on his shoulders as he undresses him. He then helps Stiles into the worn grey top he brought in. Stiles tilts his head down, staring at the faded yellow rubber duck on the front of the shirt.

Derek stands up, guiding Stiles to lay on his back. He pulls his sweats off, replacing them with the fuzzy bottoms of the ducky pajama set. Stiles blinks up at Derek, almost unresponsive. He doesn’t even care about the surprise, he’s completely fine just laying right there, letting the storm outside pound against the roof in an attempt to drown him.

So Derek just scoops Stiles up in his arms, carrying him bridal-style out of the office. Stiles stays rigid in Derek’s grasp. He watches through unfocused eyes as they move through the dim hallways, picture frames blurring past.

The lights are off in the living room, the space illuminated by both the flashes of lightning outside and the big Christmas tree. The lights strung along the limbs are a mixture of twinkling colorful ones and solid white. The white ones came from his mom, Stiles can tell. There are ornaments on there that are his, and Stiles shakes his head quickly, willing the tears to stay away. Derek carefully sits down in front of the tree, holding Stiles in his lap.

Stiles squirms around so his back is pressed to Derek’s chest. He watches the lights with wide eyes, blinking past the tears that well up against his control, taking it all in.

There’s only a single strand of colorful lights. The majority of the ornaments on the tree are Stiles’ own, but a few other ones are on there too. They’re warped, like someone took a normal ornament and squished it around. There isn’t a topper.

Derek slowly nudges Stiles, and the other boy shifts off Derek’s lap, moving beside him so he’s facing the older man. Derek points a thick finger at the ornaments, then places his palm over his own chest.

_‘Those ornaments are mine.’_

He signs slowly, waiting until Stiles nods in understanding before continuing on.

_‘They survived the fire. It was tradition to bring our own ornaments to Peter’s house and decorate the tree before christmas. We left a single box of ornaments and one string of lights behind, because Peter had gotten a real tree that year. It was smaller than the fake ones.’_

Stiles nods. He lifts his hand to brush his knuckles against Derek’s cheek, inspecting the skin for any dampness, but it’s dry. Derek, unlike Stiles, has cried all the tears he had left. The man flashes him a tiny, sad smile. Derek continues.

‘ _My brother was deaf. He was around your age when he died. Those were his absolute favorite pajamas. They’re the only ones I kept. I hope that’s okay.’_

Normally, being in a dead person’s pair of pajamas would freak Stiles out. He would imagine the ghost screaming at him, tugging on his arms and legs to try and take their clothes back. But Stiles doesn’t care. Derek trusted him enough to tell him his story and put him in his brother’s pajamas. So Stiles signs slowly, mimicking Derek’s sign for _christmas_ and _ornament_.

_‘My mom died before Christmas. We haven’t celebrated since. Those lights are mine. The ornaments, too.’_

They are, Derek tells him he’s right. Stiles just nods his head, nodnodnod. His fingers keep moving without his permission, dancing and twirling through the air before Stiles can stop them.

_K-A-T-E?_

Derek rolls his eyes. His smile is gone. A wave of disappointment surges into Stiles, knocking the air out of him. He overstepped a boundary. Derek is mad. Derek is madmadmad at _him._ Derek is mad at _Stiles_.

Two strong hands settle on either side of Stiles’ face, steadying him. Derek steers Stiles’ head up, forcing their eyes to meet. They’re not mad. They’re not swirling pools of anger or anything Stiles thought they were. They’re calm. Stiles sees a little happy in them, even. Stiles takes deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. Bright yellow bubbles of contentment emit from Derek in soothing little bursts. They condense around Stiles, settling on his shoulders and pulling him back down to reality.

After Derek is sure Stiles won’t panic on him, he signs Stiles a beautiful story about everything. The fire. Kate. The cheatinglyingbreakup. The trick to get back together with him. Stiles drinks it all in, absorbing every flick of the wrist and curve of the finger. The way Derek’s hands move mesmerize Stiles.

He forgets to pay attention after a while and doesn’t notice when Derek finishes his story, mostly because his hands don’t stop moving.

HisfingersslipintoStiles’hand. Stiles stiffens up, eyes flying wide open and locking with Derek’s. Derek just grins at him, letting Stiles feel his fingers with his own. The younger boy slowly lifts his hand, examining Derek’s palm, his fingers gracing over the bumps and ridges. Derek’s hands have been through a lot. Derek’s hands. _Derek’s hands_.

Stiles takes a deep breath, dropping Derek’s hands. He blinks up at the man, nervously rolling his bottom lip between his teeth. Stiles’ hands shake as he lifts them. He tells Derek everyfreakingdetail of the accident.

____

 

_The jeep lept from the road. It danced and twisted down the side of the cliff before it crashed at the bottom of the ravine. The impact felt like a bomb was exploding behind Stiles. The truck was speeding, going nearly seventy in a forty-five, and it couldn’t see Stiles through the rain. No one should have survived that._

Stiles slams the door shut behind him. He tosses his phone across the console and into the passenger’s seat. It takes Scott’s place. Stiles groans loudly, slamming his hands on the wheel. “Fuck you, McCall!”

He wastes no time peeling out of his driveway. Stiles tries to avoid looking at himself in the rearview mirror. His skin is pale and sticky, almost waxy with the lack of sleep and the nervous sweat he’s worked himself into. His eyes are dull, dark. They’re not swirling happy brown, like his mom used to call them. They’re hard, muddy river stones. The water surrounding them is deep, sleepless purple, ringed with the skinny red reminders of his crying episode.

The sky above his jeep is heavy with the threat of rain. Stiles presses his foot down harder on the pedal. He can’t talk to her in the rain. He won’t talk to her in the rain. The jeep speeds down the road, passing the school and the police station in a blur.

His jeep is old enough to have a slot for cassette tapes. Stiles punches the play button with his thumb. Ella Fitzgerald softly sings to him over the thundering in the skies.

_“There's a saying old, says that love is blind. Still we're often told, ‘Seek and ye shall find!’, so I’m going to seek a certain lad I’ve had in mind.”_

The clouds above crash into each other over and over. They fight and roll until they split another open along the seams. Rain spills over the edges of the wounds, tumbling down towards the earth. The drops come down in big, fat plops, splattering against Stiles’ windshield. He tightens his grip on the wheel, knuckles flashing white with the force.

He can’t talk to her in the rain. It’ll be too muddy, and he might accidentally step on someone. But he can wait for the rain to stop. It always rains in the winter, usually not for long, and Stiles has all the time in the world to wait.

Stiles pulls over to the side of the road and flicks his headlights off. He flips the switch to turn off the wipers and unbuckles his seatbelt. Stiles leans his seat back and stares at the roof of his jeep, listening to the rain pitter patter. It swirls around, mixing with Ella’s voice.

He grabs his phone, quickly dialing Scott’s number. It rings a few times before going to the voicemail. Stiles groans, rubbing at his eyes as he speaks to the machine. “Scott? It's me. Where are you? Call me.”

The rain picks up, thunder booming across the sky. The only light outside of Stiles’ car comes from the flashes of lightning. The clouds scold Stiles for leaving the house. They scream at him for being so mean to Scott earlier. Guiltfearanxiety swirls in Stiles’ tummy.

He calls Scott back. “Really, Scott. Call me. I need to talk to you.”

Again. “Please, please call me. I'm sorry. Look, I know I was an ass. You were right, it wasn't your fault. There's no one else to talk to, please. It’s dark. I’m alone and it’s dark and I want to see her but I can’t do this alone. You’re my best friend. Please, Scott.” A pause. “Please.”

The singing slowly shifts to a different sound. It’s softer, more coarse.

_“I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood. I know I could always be good to one who'll watch over me.”_

It’s his mother’s voice. She soothes Stiles’ tummy ache. The smell of cinnamon cookies fills the car up, blanketing Stiles in happy memories. His mother sings him the lullaby she used to sing when he was a baby. She didn’t leave it in his toddler years, but kept singing it to Stiles whenever he needed to calm down. It settles on his chest, warm and safe. Stiles lets his eyes shut…

It only feels like moments before the impact happens. Another vehicle rams into the back of Stiles’ jeep, unable to see it through the rain until it was too late. Stiles sits up in a rush, foot instinctively pressing down on the gas pedal. The jeep leaps from the road, shooting right through the guard rail.

It dances and twists down the side of the cliff. Jagged rocks grab onto the doors, ripping them cleanly off. The engine is shredded like it’s nothing more than a piece of paper. Bits of the gas tank ignite, sending tiny flames out into the forest. There is so much noise. Grindingpoppingscreamingexploding.

The impact felt like a bomb was exploding behind Stiles. The truck was speeding, going nearly seventy in a forty-five, and it couldn’t see Stiles through the rain.

Stiles is thrown from the vehicle, flying through the windshield in a shower of glass. He tumbles in a perfect arc. The trees reach out for him, snagging his clothes and hair, trying to catch him before he falls. Stiles lands in a pine tree.

Adrenaline kicks in when you’re dying. That’s what everybody says, but nobody is able to grasp. Despite being bloodycoldwet, Stiles feels like he can do anything. He drifts in and out of consciousness, suddenly gifted with superhuman powers of smell. He can smell the burnt rubber up on the road, the dripdripdrip of sap on the tree trunk, the glugglug of gasoline dribbling from the jeep’s tank. He can see what people are thinking. He can climb a thousand steps, jump into the sky, grab ahold of Mars. He can do anything.

The tree tried to catch him, but it tried a little too hard. A branch stuck inside Stiles. He can feel it’s sharp edges. Then the snakes crawl into his head. They curl up on either side, making his ears feel heavy and wrong. Shadows hide inside the cage of his ribs. A storm rages inside his skull, brain bright with lightning. His lungs are tired, full of pine needles, ready to take a nap. His kidneysliverstomach float away in the wind.

The rain pours down his face, mixing with the sticky sapsapbloodsapsap. It’s everywhere. He can taste it in his mouth, the metalmetalmetal. It rolls down his face in beads and drips to the ground.

Stiles can see the dark fist of smoke against the rain. He sees the bright orange flames eat away at his momjeep. The voice whirls around in the sky before the radio is melted.

_“Won't you tell him please to put on some speed? Follow my lead. Oh, how I need someone to watch over me. Someone to watch over me.”_

  The jeep was found at the bottom of the ravine. It was nothing more than a burnt out shell.

 

* * *

  


On Christmas morning, Derek nudges Stiles awake early. Stiles whines and snuggles closer to Derek, hiding his face in the crook of the man’s neck. Derek laughs and sits up, causing Stiles to tumble down on the mattress. Stiles pouts up at Derek, gaze flickering from the man to the alarm clock beside the bed. Stiles’ hands move slowly, tired. His fingers curl open and closed, hands twisting about.

_‘6:45? What the hell, Derek?’_

Derek shrugs and stands up, pulling Stiles from the bed. “Come on, come on. I’ve got a special surprise for you, you little shit.”

Stiles stares blankly at Derek’s lips for a moment before he grunts and crawls out of the bed, stumbling around the dark room to find some socks to put on.

“Come on, Stiles. It’s better to be pissed off than pissed on, you know.” Derek says as he makes the bed, arranging the pillows neatly, a morning routine his mother taught him. “Unless you’re into that sort of thing. But in that case, you’re a disgusting little fucker and I refuse to sleep with you again.”

Derek turns around to face a very sleepy, very confused Stiles standing in the doorway. When Derek turns, Stiles’ face morphs into an adorably happy mask. A sweet smile lifts the corners of his lips, a spark returning to his eyes as he flicks his hand up, tapping a Y-shape on his chin.

_‘What’s wrong?’_

Derek just shakes his head, smiling at the boy. He relays the spoken message to Stiles, who only rolls his eyes in response. He reaches one arm out for Derek, hand opening and closing in a grabby motion. The other hand finger-spells _B-R-E-A-K-F-A-S-T._

For their special Christmas breakfast, they make pancakes. Or, Derek makes pancakes and Stiles sits on the counter, glaring at the bowl of batter in his lap. Derek hums a soft little tune as he moves around the kitchen, cracking eggs into Stiles’ bowl and adding the right amount of oil and water. Stiles refuses to help. Derek tries not to take it to heart.

While the pancakes cook on the stove, Derek signs for Stiles to get the plates ready. Instead of following directions, Stiles heads into the pantry and pulls out the jug of maple syrup, flashing Derek a shit-eating grin and slamming it down triumphantly on the kitchen counter.

“Shh!” Derek laughs, swatting Stiles’ fingers away from the pancake he’s working on. He slides his spatula under the bottom side, swiveling it back and forth to make sure the pancake doesn’t stick to the pan before he lifts, flipping it easily.

Derek turns to Stiles, who’s pouting silently beside him.

“Oh,” He snorts, nudging Stiles’ hip with his own. “I’m the bad guy because I wouldn’t let you burn yourself on the stove?”

Stiles just blinks back at him, honey brown eyes wide and falsely innocent. Derek really shouldn’t find them as endearing as he does. He waves his spatula in the air, pointing towards the kitchen table and spelling with his free hand.

_‘Sit.’_

Stiles groans, grabbing his bottle of syrup and trudging his away from the breakfast counter and over to the table. He flops down into the nearest chair and sets the syrup in front of him, tossing Derek a few hateful glances every now and then as he cooks.

Once the pancakes are done, and once he’s set the table all by himself, no thanks to Stiles, Derek sits down and starts dishing out breakfast. He hums happily to himself, watching as Stiles perks up at the food and starts cutting into the pancakes on his plate.

Derek doesn’t start to sign until Stiles begins stuffing the fluffy pancakes into his mouth, sass temporarily at bay while he focuses on eating.

_‘I have a plan.’_

Stiles arches a brow, touching his open palm to his chin before moving it away.

_‘A good plan?’_

Derek simply shrugs, eying the disgusting amount of syrup Stiles pours all over his plate.

_‘It’s a plan.’_

* * *

 

It isn’t a good plan.

The pavement smiles up at Stiles, wrinkly and old. The cracks in its face spider out like little veins, a whole world inside them. Stiles tries to step over them, not wanting to crush any little bug houses. He tries his very best to avoid squishing a trail of ants as he walks.

Derek doesn’t do any of that. He moves carelessly, stepping on sticks and leaves and tiny little bugs. It probably shouldn’t bother Stiles as much as it does.

Derek holds the umbrella for both of them. The clouds stopped dropping rain before they even left the house, but Derek insisted that they bring an umbrella. So Stiles picked out the most obnoxiously bright pink one in the house out of spite and made Derek carry it. But Derek doesn’t even seem to care, which isn’t what Stiles was going for.

Derek decorated the house for Christmas. Derek used Stiles’ mom’s tree and lights. Derek made _pancakes_. And now Derek is taking Stiles to visit his mom. It should feel nice to be cared for, but Stiles feels like he’s drowning. He spent so much time building up walls and fences to keep all these bad thoughts out, and it hardly took any time for Derek to knock everything down. Now he can’t stop thinking.

_ScottMomScottLydiaKiraMomMomMom-_

Derek closes the umbrella and takes Stiles’ hand in his, pulling him away from the bad things inside his head. They reach the top of the hill sooner than Stiles would have liked. Every step closer to her grave makes Stiles colder and weaker. It’s affecting Derek too. He walks with his head down and his hand curled tightly around the handle of the umbrella.

They pass under dying oaks and crumbling benches, cobwebs strung up neatly between their legs. The crest of the hill is covered with hundreds of tiny little gravestones. Some of them are actual stones, marking nameless graves full of decomposed bodies Stiles never knew. His grandparents have an actual marker, and his mother has one next to them.

Derek pulls on Stiles’ hand, stealing his attention. He pulls his hand away to sign.

_‘How close to you want to be?’_

Stiles doesn’t answer. He makes his way through the maze of graves, trying his hardest not to step on any. His dad told him when he was little that if you stepped on a grave, the ghost will come back and haunt you. Stiles stops at the tiny hill of grass covering his mom up. He steps on the bottom of the grave like he used to do every deathiversary. He wouldn’t mind his mother’s ghost haunting him.

Stiles sits down at the foot of the grave. His legs go crisscrossapplesauce and he puts his spoonshands in the bowl. Wetness soaks into his pants and he shivers. Derek sets the umbrella on the grass and sits next to Stiles.

 _‘Your butt is going to get wet.’_ Stiles warns him, not looking at Derek as he signs. Derek doesn’t heed to the warning, sitting hunched over with his elbows on his jeans and his chin cradled in his hands.

The two of them sit there for a long time, neither of them moving, two statues joining the gravestones around them.

 _‘Hello,’_ Derek signs after a while. Stiles is startled by the movement and he turns his head a little to watch Derek. Derek’s lips move along with his hands, speaking so Stiles’ mother can hear, but singing so Stiles is a part of the conversation.

_‘I don’t know if you’d understand me if I signed, but I don’t want to leave Stiles out of this. So I apologize in advance if I mess up my words. It’s hard to think in two languages at once, you know?’_

Stiles smiles a little, nodding his head. He does know, because it’s hard to think in english and change the sentence structure to be able to sign in ASL. He can’t even imagine talking in english while simultaneously signing in proper ASL structure, but Derek makes it look effortless.

_‘I know Stiles didn’t make it here to see you last year. It wasn’t his fault, I hope you understand that. There was an accident and he wasn’t able to come. That’s also why he’s late this year. He’s pretty clumsy. You know that, I’m sure. If he’s this unstable as a teenager, I can hardly imagine what it must have been like trying to keep toddler Stiles on his feet.’_

Stiles nods and laughs, not caring how loud it is. It’s hard to wake the dead. Stiles has tried. Derek jumps at the sound, quickly flashing Stiles a tiny smile before he goes back to signing.

 _‘He’s a great kid. You did a really good job with him, Mrs.-’_ Derek pauses, glancing up at the words on the gravestone. _C-L-A-U-D-I-A_

‘ _Claudia. He’s so smart. You’d be proud of how far he’s come, I’m sure.’_

Stiles pulls his knees up to his chest, biting down harshly on his bottom lip. His vision swims with the threat of tears and he quickly blinks them away. Derek is talking to his mom. Derek is talking to his _mom._

_‘I wish I could have met you. Stiles simply adores you. He misses you every single day.’_

Stiles draws in a shaky breath, lowering his head. He presses his eyes into his knees, pushing until he sees sparks behind his eyelids. He feels the vibration of sobs in his throat, and doesn’t fight as Derek slowly pulls him into his lap. Stiles hides his face in Derek’s chest. They stay there like that until the clouds open back up again and dump their heavy little raindrops on their heads.

Stiles is the one who gets up first. He stands there in the rain, rubbing angrily at his eyes to try and dry them up before they leave. He motions for Derek to go ahead and start the car. He’s surprised when Derek listens.

Once he’s alone, Stiles signs slowly, his movements choppy and unsure. All of his thoughts are reduced to single strings of syllables.

_‘He’s good. I love you. I’m sorry. Goodbye.’_

____

 

Derek doesn’t take Stiles home, even though Stiles wants to do nothing but curl up in his bed and hide away from the world for a little bit longer. He doesn’t want to go anywhere. He doesn’t want to see anyone, not even his dad. Visiting his mom always left him groggy, and his limbs were heavy from the dozen ghosty hands tugging him closer to the ground.

But, much to his despair, there they are, _not_ at home. Derek parks the car outside of the little coffee shop where he works. Stiles squints to read the sign through the rain-streaked windshield. _Hale ‘n Company._

He shifts in his seat, blinking quizzically at Derek. Derek signs to the store, his eyes blank as he watches his own hands move.

_‘They died on Christmas. Dad worked here. And his dad. And his dad. I don’t know how far back it goes. It was supposed to be mine. Their will gave it to Peter, though.’_

The lights are on inside, people wandering around, filling orders for a handful of customers with nowhere else to be on Christmas. No one looks up as Derek and Stiles walk in, it’s like they don’t even exist. Two ghosts, standing in the middle of the coffee shop, invisible to everyone and no one all at once.

Stiles draws in a deep breath, the sweet smell of pastries and cream filtering through the air. He doesn’t know what kind of coffee shop sells coffee, pastries, _and_ ice-cream, but there it is, right in front of him. He stares wistfully at the tub of double-fudge-mango-extreme from behind the glass counter.

A tap on his arm jolts the boy from his daze. He whirls around to face Derek, smiling shyly and pointing at the ice-cream. He pulls his hands towards himself, tilting his head to the side.

Derek turns his hands upside down, moving them towards his body in a pulling motion.

‘Y _ou want some?’_

Stiles nods slowly, a few people lifting their heads when he clears his throat nervously. Derek brushes his fingertips along Stiles’ cheek in a reassuring gesture before sliding behind the counter. Employees move out of Derek’s way without question, letting him do as he pleases.

Stiles watches with wide eyes as Derek begins scooping out the double-fudge-mango-extreme ice cream into the cone. It’s a brown and orange mixture, rich, and packed with an insane amount of brownie bits and mango chunks. By the way the employees glare at it, it’s obvious that everyone hates it. It only makes Stiles want it more.

Derek watches with amusement as Stiles points to the condiments section of the counter, tapping the compartment where the rainbow sprinkles are. Derek nods, laughing softly at Stiles. "Gonna come down with diabetes, I swear. You're going to slip into a sugar coma. You stupid, sugar-driven little shit."

Stiles stands there, grinning happily as he watches his sugary creation being built. Derek is talking too fast to even attempt to lip-read, and Stiles doesn’t really care what he has to say anyway. His main focus is on the ice-cream.

The two of them sit at a booth near the large glass windows at the front of the coffee shop, which isn’t really a coffee shop, but more of a everything-you-could-want shop. There’s pastries and coffee and tea and ice-cream and Stiles doesn’t even know what the brown goopy stuff behind the counter is, but it smells amazing like some sort of soup his mom would make.

Stiles licks at the chocolatey mango goodness and Derek watches him, his fingers already signing.

_‘That was Noah’s favorite. It’s the only original flavor I convinced Peter to keep around.’_

Stiles stops licking and lowers his cone, blinking slowly at Derek. He signs with one hand, his cheeks warming up in a soft pink blush.

_‘Sorry. I just saw the ice-cream, and-’_

Derek quickly cuts him off, waving his hand dismissively.

 _‘No. It’s fine. More than fine.’_ His shoulders shake with a laugh as he points at Stiles, then makes a swirly hand-motion around his own face.

_‘You’re really cute when you get like that. I like it. I like you.’_

Stiles chokes a little on the ice-cream, nearly dropping his cone in the process. He wasn’t expecting that. He feels his face heat up, the warmth spreading down his throat, and he probably looks like a fucking tomato and _what the fuck_? Derek just blinks back at Stiles, doing that stupid dimple-smile that makes Stiles’ legs feel like jello, and he can’t take it anymore.

Stiles stands suddenly, shoving his cone in Derek’s direction and stumbling out of the booth. He hurries to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him and staring wide-eyed at the tiles.

Derek freaking Hale and his stupid dimples and his stupid fingers and his stupid safeness. Stiles doesn’t realize there’s someone else in there with him until there’s a tap on his arm. He lifts his head quickly and stumbles sideways into the wall, trying to verbalize some sort of apology as he does so.

Scott stares back at him, a glazed smile on his lips and tears in his eyes. Scott McCall, crying in the bathroom, like a cherry on top of Stiles’ confusing and fucked-up banana split day. Scott wipes at his eyes and tries to hold it back, but he can’t. He buries his face in his hands and he weeps. Stiles couldn’t have been more surprised if someone had walked right on in and set him on fire.

Stiles hesitantly taps Scott, gaining his attention so he can sign.

_‘Are you okay?’_

Scott shoves him away, wiping his eyes with one hand and blindly pushing Stiles around with the other. His lips move fast, and the vein on the side of his neck bulges as he yells. Stiles watches, dumbfounded, as the angry words swirl around the air and flush themselves down the toilets. He shakes his hand, trying to get Scott to slow down, but Scott doesn’t falter. He just keeps _yelling_ at Stiles, like Stiles has any idea what he’s saying.

Stiles opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again, trying to make any words feel right on his tongue at this point. Anything to make Scott stop. To make Scott _listen._

It’s a few minutes before Scott stills, red-faced and panting. Sleepless bags hang under his eyes, his gaze clouded and glazed over. He pushes Stiles away frantically, his tearstained face registering more fear than anything else as he keeps the boy away with both hands. He lumbers out of the bathroom, the door swinging wildly behind him. And when that stops, Scott is gone.

No one ever sees Scott McCall again.

* * *

 

The ringing of the phone draws Derek out of sleep. The clock on the wall says 11:41 p.m., and Derek can’t for the life of him imagine who would be calling at such an hour. He glances down at the sleeping boy beside him and holds his breath, hoping for a moment the phone doesn’t wake Stiles as he fumbles around, trying to find the vibrating-ringing-ringing-vibrating.

He just got Stiles to sleep about thirty minutes ago. The boy would hardly look at Derek when they left the coffee shop, and Derek couldn’t for the life of him figure out what went wrong. One minute they were laughing and having fun, and the next, he was Switzerland.

For a moment, he wonders if he will ever figure Stiles out.

Derek checks the caller I.D. It’s Stiles’s dad, calling from his personal phone instead of the police station. He tries not to jostle Stiles too much as he sits up in bed, sliding the answer button over and talking lowly into the receiver. Stiles slowly rolls over, sprawled out in a mass of beautiful boy.

“Hello?”

“Derek.” He sounds frantic, like he’s been running from something trying to kill him. “Derek? Are you there? Is Stiles there?”

“Yeah,” Derek mumbles, glancing down at Stiles, snoring softly into the pillow. “What is it?”

“Stiles is there?”

Derek nods, reaching a hand out to place his palm on Stiles’ side to make sure he’s real, not just some figment of Derek’s imagination. “Yessir. He’s right here.”

“Scott’s dead. Can you hear me? Scott’s dead.”

* * *

Derek wakes him up quickly, shaking and shaking his side until Stiles’ eyes open. He rolls on his back, dazed and confused as he blinks up at Derek. Derek’s eyes are wide and flashing with some sort of emotion that Stiles can’t quite place. It sends a shock of fear through him and he slowly sits up, eying the clock on the nightstand before returning his focus to Derek.

Stiles taps his Y-shaped hand on his chin.

‘ _What’s wrong?’_

Derek flicks on the lamp, hands trembling as he looks around the room. Big smoky waves of emotion roll outward from Derek, filling the room with fear and nervousness. It smothers Stiles and he can’t breathe. Eventually, he starts signing, and the waves start to go down enough for Stiles to poke his nose out. It doesn’t really help.

Stiles stares at Derek, blinking slowly in the dim light of the lamp. He taps his right palm with his left fingertips over and over.

‘ _Again. Again. Again.’_

Stiles makes Derek repeat himself until it’s a constant news stream running through his mind. He watches Derek spell _S-C-O-T-T_ and then set his hands parallel to each other before flipping them to the side.

_‘Scott is dead.’_

Stiles feels as if he is falling, plummeting right off his bed into oblivion. The floor disappears. There is a point of stinging pain in his chest, a spider weaving a web that fills his entire body with a sharp ache. The pain pushes down on his ribs, making him sink further down into the darkness.

Stiles signs numbly, tapping his thumb against his pointer and middle finger.

‘ _No. No.’_

He holds his palm up and flicks his index finger on it like a hand on the face of a clock.

_‘He can’t be. I talked to him a few minutes before we came home.’_

_‘He’s dead, Stiles. Everyone’s freaking out. He got in a car accident-’_

Derek continues to sign, but Stiles has already stopped watching. He stares blankly at Derek’s hands, watching them move without trying to process any of it. Scott is dead. Scott died. Scott.

Derek’s wrong. Stiles can prove it. Derek doesn’t know anything. Derek doesn’t know Scott. Stiles knows Scott. Stiles knows Scott’s not dead. His hand flies up to his mouth and he shakes his head. Stiles uses his free hand to tap the side of it against his neck.

_‘Lies. Lies. Lies.’_

Stiles sucks in a sharp, rattling breath. His hands move quickly, fingers wobbling and skipping over some signs as he goes.

_‘That’s not true. They’re lying. You’re lying. You’re playing some stupid trick, you lying piece of-’_

_‘Stiles.’_ Derek cuts him off. His hand moves to the boy’s thigh. Stiles shoves it away.

 _‘You’re lying!’_ Stiles scoots back, black waves of panic sloshing around inside his head, clouding his vision.

Derek shakes his head, his fingers moving deftly in Stiles’ plane of vision.

_‘Stiles, it’s true.’_

A horrible sound wrenches itself out of Stiles’ chest, the noise not having any words, absolutely nothing and everything all in one. Derek signs Stiles’ name over and over, trying to get his attention. Through his nothing sound, Stiles calls out for Scott, but the meaning is lost in a jumble of shrieks and sobs.

Derek was right. Scott McCall died at 10:32 p.m. in the emergency room where his mother worked. She continued chest compressions on him even after the doctor called his death. She sat near him in the morgue and held his hand until they forced her to leave.

Scott lost control of his vehicle and drove head first off the side of the road. He was wearing a seat belt. The airbags deployed. He was still alive when the paramedics cut him out of the origami metal mess his car had become. They said the vehicle reeked of booze and there were no tire marks on the road indicating he had tried to stop before running over. The final report said he was too drunk to think about breaking.

Scott McCall died at 10:32 p.m. on Christmas. It was raining. The roads were slick. No one could have predicted it. When Stiles thinks about it, he remembers fruity fudge chocolate on his tongue and a cramp in his stomach and the exact temperature of the bathroom air on his skin as Scott pushed him away again and again. In retrospect, Stiles thinks he knew Scott was going to kill himself as he ran out of the bathroom.

Scott McCall died at 10:32 p.m. on Christmas after driving off the same stretch of road his best friend Stiles Stilinski had a year earlier. His car twisted and danced down the edge of the cliff, through the few remaining strips of yellow police tape, and landed in the ravine. He was rushed to the same hospital, laid on the same bed, cared for by the same group of nurses and doctors. But unlike Stiles, Scott didn’t get to be sent to a special room and have himself all wrapped up in fluttering fabric.

He is wrapped in silk, sleeping in a tiny wooden box made just for him. Stiles watches from the back of the room, trying to imagine Scott’s chest rising and falling. The people who take pride in dressing up dead people used the wrong shade of foundation on Scott. They tried to cover up the cuts on his face with concealer, but they only ended up making him splotchy.

The room is full of crying clowns and parading acrobats dressed in black. They tiptoe back and forth, dancing between the pews and clusters of flowers. Everyone carries Scott’s jersey and red flowers and cards written for someone who will never read them. They stuff his coffin full of mementos.

Stiles finds it ridiculous. If there’s anything Scott needs to take with him to the afterlife, it’s not a bunch of flowers and paper. He’ll need his inhaler and a flashlight. He told Derek that, but he couldn’t go up there and be close to dead Scott. So Derek was doing that for him.

Stiles watches everyone touch Scott’s dead hand, kiss his dead cheeks, pet his dead hair. They walk behind the mahogany coffin, saying goodbye even though Scott is already gone, unable to understand the finality of death. Stiles watches Scott’s mom crying in the front, sitting in the spot Stiles did when his mom died. His dad stands behind her, a hand on her shoulder. She cries silently, not acknowledging anyone who tries to approach her.

Stiles knows there will always be a part of her that breaks off and gets stuck there. She will never leave this funeral. It’s the part of her that refuses to let Scott go. Stiles knows because a part of him is still at his mom’s funeral, the part that needs their bond to continue to exist past their mortal life.

Derek breaks away from the parading mourners and walks to Stiles. He holds his hands up, flicking them outward.

_‘Finished.’_

Stiles nods his thanks. Derek leads Stiles to a seat near the back, touching Stiles at all times to try and keep him calm. Stiles isn’t allowed to sit near his dad. He isn’t allowed to have any contact with him. It’s the R-U-L-E-S rules. Peter tried to explain it to him before they came, but it didn’t really make sense to Stiles. He wasn’t at the suicide ward, he just went out with Derek the other day, but he still wasn’t allowed any visitors or to speak with his family. Stiles tries to push that thought away by focusing on something else.

He taps Derek’s shoulder, causing the man to jump. He looks down at Stiles with surprise, nodding at him to sign.

‘ _Derek. Dead people’s fingernails never stop growing.’_

Derek furrows his brows. He pushes Stiles’ hands down, but Stiles pulls them free. He frantically signs to the man.

_‘Their fingernails never stop growing.’_

Derek sighs and shakes his head. He signs low near his lap, trying not to cause any distractions during the funeral.

‘ _Yes, they do, Stiles. If they didn’t, there would be dozens of fingernails shooting up from the ground. Pay attention.’_

Somehow, that thought doesn’t make Stiles feel any better. But he slumps back in his seat and stares ahead. He tries not thinking of anything instead. Maybe that’ll work.

People got up to speak, everyone blurring together in a continuous line of black clothes and white, waxy faces. Stiles couldn’t watch their lips close enough to understand what they were talking about. And quite frankly, he didn’t care. He sits still in his black suit, balling up his grief so none of it can escape. After what seems like an eternity, Derek taps his arm. Stiles blinks up at him, only catching the end of Derek’s signing.

'- _to speak. Since you two were best friends.'_

Stiles’ eyes widen. He turns his head to find Melissa McCall staring at him, her eyes puffy and ringed with red. He looks at Derek helplessly, shaking his head a little. Derek flashes him a tiny, reassuring smile.

_‘I’ll interpret for you. It’ll be okay.’_

Derek has to drag Stiles up to the podium. He stands as far away from dead Scott as he can, his eyes on his shoes. He stands there for a while until Derek nudges him. Stiles shakes his head, singing small so only Derek can see his hands.

_‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.’_

Derek shrugs. ‘ _Just talk about Scott. Start from the beginning and work your way forward.’_

Stiles nods a little and shifts around in his spot. He signs directly to Derek, biting harshly on his bottom lip.

‘ _I was a little boy who grew up alone. I was weird. Twitchy. No one liked me. I didn’t have any friends, only my mom and my dad. I was on my own. On my own, I watched my mom bake cookies. On my own, I watched my dad battle the bad guys. On my own, I colored and read comic books and wished not to be on my own.’_

Derek’s lips move at a normal pace, his eyes locked on Stiles’ hands. He doesn’t falter, and somehow, Stiles knows he’s making him sound a whole lot better than whatever mess he’s signing.

_‘I remember having this dream where a little kid who was made of boogers and sticks was my bestest friend. And then Scott came and fulfilled that dream. With Scott, I battled dragons and saved princesses. I walked through jungles full of dangerous predators with only a spear to protect me. I leaped from couch cushion to couch cushion, because those were the only rocks in a sea full of lava.’_

Stiles dares to glance up at the audience. Melissa McCall is nodding, a tiny, sad smile plastered on her face as she listens. Derek’s shoulders shake with laughter as he finishes translating Stiles’ signs. He smiles at Stiles, nodding for him to continue. Stiles swallows thickly, tasting a bitter metal in his mouth.

_‘He was my bestest friend forever. We had sleepovers every weekend. The scenery of our adventures changed, but we were still the same people deep down inside. We helped each other through crushes and failed tests and the horrors of puberty. I remember having to endure Scott’s endless rendition of I Got my First Chest Hair! - The Musical. Trust me, it wasn’t pretty.’_

Derek rolls his eyes at him. Stiles slowly straightens himself up, signing more to Scott’s mom than Derek. She watches him with wide eyes, nodding to him as she remembers.

_‘Scott helped me when my mom died. He crossed-his-heart-and-hoped-to-die that he would never evereverever leave me.’_

Stiles pauses. His face falls as he shakes his head, scooting closer to Derek. Derek places a hand on the small of his back.

_‘I never thought he meant it.’_

Stiles drops his hands, his gaze falling on the floor. He feels the cold press of Scott’s dead hands covering his face, nose, throat. Choking him. Squeezing the light from the memories. Derek wraps his arms around Stiles, tugging him into a warmer embrace, chasing away dead Scott’s dead fingers.

Derek clears his throat, speaking to the audience for Stiles. “When I first met Stiles, he was in standing in my kitchen wearing nothing but a jacket and a pair of Batman boxer-shorts.”

The people laugh a little, Derek feels Stiles relax at the vibrations in his chest.

“His dad told me that he loves fiercely. He doesn’t stop loving someone just because they’re gone. Stiles loves his mom just as much, if not more than he did when she was here with him. Stiles loves the stupid backpack that he’s carried since third grade and refuses to get rid of. Stiles loves Scott. Stiles won’t ever stop loving Scott.”

Stiles shifts in Derek’s grasp, moving so their chests are touching. He lifts a hand to press his fingertips to Derek’s throat. Then he presses his finger to Derek’s lips, stopping him from continuing.

They don’t stay for the burial. Peter picks them up and makes Derek drive so he can sit in the back with Stiles. He passes a pad of paper back and forth between them, trying to squeeze in a therapy session in the back of the car.

_‘Would you rather be dead in the place of Scott?’_

Stiles eyes the paper curiously. He scribbles down his response with the pen before shoving is back at Peter.

‘ _You know, sometimes I question your qualifications for this job.’_

Peter grabs the paper, angrily flinging back a response.

_‘Shut up, Stiles.’_

Stiles shrugs and leans back in his seat, watching Derek drive. Sometimes Derek’s eyes catch Stiles’ in the rearview mirror. They crinkle a little with a smile that Stiles is sure has a little dimple to accompany it. Stiles doesn’t understand how Derek can smile after coming out of a funeral. Maybe it’s some sort of superpower.

Stiles slowly takes the paper back from Peter. Peter stares at him in shock, not bothering Stiles to show him what he wrote until he’s ready to do it by himself. He writes slowly, his vision starting to blur with unshed tears.

_‘I killed him, didn’t I? He crossed-his-heart-and-hoped-to-die, and then he did. It’s my fault.’_

Peter shakes his head, but nothing he writes back seems to help Stiles at all. When they get home, Derek locks the doors after Peter gets out of the car. He climbs to the back seat and sits next to Stiles, waiting until the boy stops trying to escape the car to sign to him.

_‘It’s not your fault, Stiles.’_

Stiles shakes his head and presses his back against the car door. He puts his feet on the seat between them and holds his knees to his chest.

Derek sticks his thumb under his chin and flicks it out in the _not_ sign. But there’s no head behind it, no ammunition. He’s just stating the facts for Stiles.

_‘It’s not. Scott blamed himself for your accident, and it drove him to the point of insanity. You can’t think like that.’_

Stiles shakes his head againagainagain, squeezing his eyes shut and ducking his head. He doesn’t want to listen to Derek. Derek doesn’t know. Derek didn’t make a promise with a dead boy.

____

 

For weeks after the funeral, Stiles kept having a terrible dream that seemed like the bigger, badder brother to the one from before. Instead of Derek in the desert, it was Scott. And instead of a random car crashing into Stiles, it was Scott. And then he was in this dark room. It smelled like the bathroom, but Stiles couldn’t see anything. He could sort of feel someone shifting around in the darkness, someone he was pretty sure was Scott. He was pulling frantically on Stiles’ clothes, trying to get him to help. Stiles couldn’t find his hand, and he spent forever trying to find him.

He’d wake up and his heart would be racing. Derek was always there, arms tightening protectively around Stiles and a delicate kiss pressed to the top of his head, but Stiles couldn’t bear to be touched by him. Not because of anything he’d done, but because somewhere buried in his touch was the constant reminder that everyone Stiles loved disappeared.

Stiles always sent Derek away and spent the rest of the night watching the light change outside.

____

 

Derek corners him one morning after breakfast. Stiles’ _“inpatient”_ stay is almost over, and although he’s done a pretty good job at avoiding Derek, Stiles knows that he won’t let him go without another conversation. So Stiles isn’t surprised when Derek shoves him into the corner near the microwave and plants his hands down on the counter beside the boy. Stiles lets out this noise of protest, the last flicker of a fight dying inside him as he pushes at Derek’s chest, but the man doesn’t move.

Derek stays still until Stiles stops fighting it, and then he begins to sign.

‘ _He left you. And that’s such a dick move. Fuck he’s an ass- Is it okay if I say that? Whatever, I’m going to say it anyway because how the fuck-’_

The wave of signs smacks Stiles’ across the face. It builds up around his limbs, making it hard for him to move. Stiles rolls his eyes and pushes Derek’s hands away the best he can. He shakes his head and folds his arms across his chest. He really doesn’t need a pep-talk right now, and from Derek of all people. He’d expect this sort of therapy ambush from Peter, but Derek? He thought he could trust Derek.

He signs quickly, not making eye contact with the older man.

_‘I get it. Peter keeps saying my brain tells me I’m a bad thing but apparently I’m not. Don’t blame yourself for his death, blah blah blah.’_

Derk cuts him off, placing his thumb and forefinger on Stiles’ chin, tilting his head to focus on him. He signs slowly, deliberately, his finger gently touching Stiles’ sternum each time he signs _you_.

‘ _You are a good thing. You were a good thing before Scott, and you’re still a good thing after. I don’t care what you think you are, or what you think you did. You’re good. You’re such a good thing and I don’t-’_

Derek pauses, shaking his head and nudging his hip against Stiles’.

_‘I’m not going to say I know what you’re going through, because that’s so stereotypical. No one can understand exactly what you’re going through until they’ve been in your shoes. But I lost my family too, Stiles. And I blamed myself for years. You can’t do this to yourself.’_

Stiles squirms around, pushing Derek out of the way and running to escape the big flood of words being thrown at his face. Derek follows him to the living room, where Stiles is staring at the unlit Christmas tree still stashed in the corner. Stiles slowly lifts his hands, twisting his pointer fingers inwards.

_‘It hurts.’_

Derek nods, tapping his arm to get his attention.

_‘I know it hurts. It’s going to hurt, because that’s how the universe works. But trust me, Stiles, you’ll be so much better once you get past this.’_

Stiles flops down on the floor, shoulders slumping with defeat. He rests his elbows on his thighs, hanging his head in his hands. He draws in quick, shaky breaths, willing himself to calm down and pay attention because he _knows_ Derek is right. Derek is always right. Slowly, Stiles lifts his head and blinks, darting his tongue out to wet his dry lips.

Derek sits down across from him, already signing.

_‘Trust. You have to trust me. There’s this quote, right, and it’s like, ‘For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse. So collapse. Crumble. This is not your destruction.’ This is your birth.’_

Stiles nods a little, trying to follow along. He lifts his hand to rub at his face, knowing his eyes are all puffy and red and his hair is mussed unattractively. But Derek doesn’t seem to mind, he just keeps signing, and Stiles just keeps soaking it all in like he knows he’s supposed to.

_‘And this is just like what’s happening to you because you’re crumbling and it feels like everything is collapsing around you, but when all the dust has cleared I promise you’ll be the best, shiniest star out there.’_

Derek pauses when Stiles turns away. He pulls the boy into his lap, holding him close and trying his best not to let on that he knows Stiles is crying. Stiles curls up against Derek’s chest, burying his face in the material of his shirt. Derek slowly rocks him back and forth, hand ghosting small circles on his back.

After a few moments, Stiles sits up, shifting to face Derek.

_‘How long?’_

Derek lifts a shoulder in a shrug, signing the best he can with one hand.

_‘Well, it takes a star a thousand years to form-’_

Stiles cuts him off quickly, correcting him. ‘ _No. Wrong. Peter taught me that it’s more like a hundred-thousand years.’_

 _‘Okay, Stiles.’_ Derek’s shoulders shake with laughter as he pokes the boy’s side. Stiles squirms, a bright grin on his face as he shoves Derek’s hand away. _‘That’s not the point, you idiot.’_

Stiles lifts his hands to push on Derek’s shoulders until the man lies on his back. Stiles sits on his tummy, knees straddling on either side of him. He nods, tapping the side of his own head.

‘ _I know. But you’re not very good at pep-talks. You just throw a bunch of stupid information at me about stars-’_

Derek’s face falls. He signs back frantically, his bottom lip jutting out in a tiny pout.

_‘Background information! I was getting ready-’_

 ‘ _Whatever!’_ Stiles laughs, pushing Derek’s hands down to get him to stop. Derek can’t help but smile at the ridiculous sound Stiles makes. It’s beautiful.

The two of them sit like that for awhile, Derek staring up at Stiles, and Stiles looking back down at Derek. The world keeps moving around them, but for the moment, they are held in space, frozen in time. Stiles feels like nothing can get to them, and even if it did, he’s sure Derek would make it go away again.

After a moment, Derek mouths Stiles’ name, and the boy tilts his head at him, nodding his approval to continue. Derek lifts his hands, bending his pointer finger in a question.

_‘What would you do if you could do anything?’_

Stiles shrugs, glancing around the room. He points behind them at the Christmas tree, then taps his finger tips from his cheek to his temple.

_‘Home.’_

Derek nods. He understands. Stiles continues to look around the room, and Derek lies beneath him, watching.

He can’t help himself from reaching up and brushing Stiles’ hair back with his fingertips. He can’t help tugging the boy closer, Stiles flopping down on his chest. He can’t help the way his body moves on its own, lips brushing gently over Stiles’.  

He can’t help the way Stiles’ face contorts into one of stricken horror, or the way Stiles jumps up and runs out of the room.

He can’t help the sinking feeling in his chest that he’s really messed up this time.

____

 

Stiles gets to go home the next day. Special court rule, made possible by the number-one shrink in Beacon Hills and the entire police department. Peter tells him at dinner, and Stiles watches as Derek grimaces at his mashed potatoes. He abruptly pushes himself away from the table and disappears into the house.

He doesn’t come in when Stiles screams himself awake from a nightmare, and he’s not there in the morning when Peter helps Stiles pack his things in the Camaro.

Stiles gets dropped off, alone, by Peter at the police station, interrupting the highly acclaimed process of a dozen coffee-guzzling, overweight ex-police officers stringing lights and party streamers from the ceiling.

The new guy, Deputy Parrish, ushers Stiles past the party decorations and to his dad’s office. When Stiles pushes the door open, he’s standing behind his desk, back to the boy. And he is crying, shoulders shaking up and down.

Stiles immediately wants to turn and run, he’d only ever seen his dad cry after his mom died and he was being sososo good at not thinking about bad things. But instead, he takes a deep breath and steps inside.

Peter would call it progress. Stiles calls it brash stupidity.

John doesn’t turn around. Stiles doesn’t think he knows his son is there. But as he stands there watching his dad, he realizes how scary it is to see someone you love change right before your eyes. His dad never cried, never showed emotion. He was always stoic, an immovable force. But here he is, sobbing in his office. It throws Stiles off balance, and he realizes this is how his dad felt over the months Stiles went without his hearing, as he began not to recognize his own son in small ways. He had reacted by pulling Stiles out of school, forcing him to live at home in this narrow world that fit his own.

Even now as he understands what it feels like, Stiles wants his dad to straighten up, take command, go outside and tell the guys that the banner is crooked and the lights can’t be plugged into the same outlet or they’ll blow a fuse.

Stiles crosses the room, coming up behind his dad. He has so many things he wants to tell him, so many things to apologize for. He just doesn’t know where to begin, or if his dad will even understand any of it.

His dad slowly turns around when Stiles taps his shoulder, one hand covering his mouth, and for a moment they just stand there and stare at each other. Letters tumble past John’s fingers, swirling around their faces before being sucked up into the air vent. Waves of sentences collide against the sides of Stiles’ brain, trickling down into nothing.

John takes a deep breath and drops his hand. His lips open to speak, but Stiles doesn’t let him finish. He takes a step forward and slides his arms around his dad’s neck. John stiffens at first, not moving as Stiles buries his face in his dad’s shoulder. Neither of them movebreathethink. Then his dad slides his arms around his son, body enclosing Stiles’. Stiles can feel their hearts beating, their chest rising and falling, touching briefly and pulling apart for a moment before reconnecting. After all this time it isn’t awkward. It isn’t timid or afraid. It is perfect.

When they step out of the office a little while later, the decorations are complete. It’s raining outside, the drops heavy as they throw themselves against the windows. Stiles tries his best not to watch it. The lights flicker and the ground trembles beneath Stiles’ feet. He tries not to notice.

The first arrivals sit in their cars outside the station, waiting for a break in the downpour to try and make their way inside the building. Stiles dad must have invited nearly the whole town to this “Welcome Home” party. The thought of that makes Stiles’ tummy ache.

In a minute, they’ll all be climbing out of their cars, coming up the walk, and stepping inside where everything is sort of ready. The banner is, indeed, crooked. The streamers keep falling from the ceiling. And someone forgot that the cake was made of ice-cream, so there is a puddle of chocolate goo in a cardboard box waiting to be thrown out after the party.

But the coolers are stocked with ice and beverages, a makeshift cake has been thrown together last minute and the red icing spells half of Stiles’ name. There are flowers and brightly colored napkins and the whole place smells like meatballs and sugar. Who can resist meatballs and sugar?

Everyone starts filling in the station after they realize the rain isn’t going to stop. There are dozens of kids from Stiles’ school who notice his existence in the presence of free food and drinks. Melissa shows up, clinging to Stiles’ dad’s arm like it’s some sort of life vest. She watches Stiles sadly, and he tries his best not to make eye contact.

One of the first groups of kids to arrive is Kira and Lydia, trailed by the lacrosse team. Kira hugs Stiles and ruffles up his hair. She presses a wet, sloppy kiss to his cheek and signs _I missed you._ Stiles doesn’t miss the way her hollow eyes flicker around the room and linger a beat too long on Scott’s mom. He squeezes her bicep in support, and she flashes him a small, sad smile.

Lydia doesn’t let him escape a hug for a good five minutes, her tiny arms wrapped snugly around his waist. For her size, Stiles is surprised by her strength. It must be how she keeps her jackass boyfriend in line. Said jackass, Jackson, slaps him on the shoulder, and Danny nods in his direction.

Stiles smiles at everyone who walks in the door, taking their jackets and umbrellas from them and creating a semi-organized pile in the corner. He doesn’t move, even after all the people have come in and the last car is parked. He thinks that maybe he missed Derek in the wave of people.

Stiles manages to find Peter near the back, signing with Kira, but there’s no Derek.

He hovers close to the two, hoping Peter would offer an explanation, but after pretending to study the drinks in the cooler for a few minutes there’s nothing else to do but outright ask. He taps Peter’s arm, gaining his attention, and signs slowly, carefully.

_‘Where’s Derek?’_

Peter and Kira exchange a look. Kira hesitantly replies.

‘ _Peter said he had to run some errands. But he said he’d drop by later if the party was still going on.’_

Stiles nods once. Right. He understands if Derek doesn’t want to see him, he fucked things up pretty badly the day before. Stiles goes back to examining the drinks, bending down to turn each one over to read their labels. He’s almost ready to call it quits and go huddle in the back room by himself when he’s grabbed from behind, quickly being swept away by his dad to dance to a song that he can’t hear the rhythm of. His dad doesn’t seem to care.

They spin around and around on the floor, people smiling and moving out of their way. His dad drops Stiles’ hands, and the boy teeters away, the whole room tilting and pitching beneath him as he stumbles towards the windows. Stiles stands there until he can catch his breath, observing the people at his party.

His dad replaces him with Melissa, dipping and twirling her around the dance floor. Kira and Lydia talk around the table of meatballs. The lacrosse team sneaks beer from the cooler and tries to chug them before they get caught. Everyone laughs and talks and there’s this buzzing of energy around Stiles that doesn’t want him there, doesn’t want him soaking it up. It pushes him outside into the rain.

Stiles takes in a breath, leaning against the front of the police station. He lets the rain drop on him, rigid and nervous as he looks up at the sky. He sees movement out of the corner of his eye and then there’s Derek, walking around the corner of the station. Stiles lets out his breath and just looks at him.

Derek runs a hand through his hair, glancing in the window at all the people inside the building. Then he looks in Stiles’ direction. Stiles tries to keep their eyes on each other, willing Derek to stay where he is, but the man turns and disappears around the corner again. Someone opens the door near Stiles and taps his shoulder.

Kira motions for him to come back inside, but Stiles shakes his head. He lets out a noise that isn’t quite a word and starts down the pavement. He can see Derek at the back of the rear parking lot.

The lightning flashes above him. Stiles winces at the rumble of thunder, trying to push away the memories.

_… bloodsapsapblood drip drip dripping down his face, into his mouth, filling his lungs. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t call for help. The tree held him hostage as the rain tried to drown him//Scott flying off the road, wings unable to open in time to save him, dying in the spot Stiles-_

Stiles runs. The memories tear out of his hair and get carried away in the wind. By the time Stiles reaches Derek, he’s breathless. Red-faced. Trembling from the cold and fear all twisted into one big disaster. His heart is thumping so hard in his chest that he’s almost positive he’s going to die, but he doesn’t. Derek turns around just as Stiles gets to him, looking surprised to see him out in the rain. For a moment neither of them do anything as Stiles struggles to catch his breath.

Derek’s lips move. Stiles watches them curve, close, tongue tap his teeth. He’s seen it before, every time Derek’s signed his name. _‘Stiles’._

Stiles knew that anything could happen then. He might be too late again, he might have missed his chance. He might have been too busy trying to protect the people he cared about from disappearing to notice that he was the one pushing Derek away. He lifts his hands, staring directly at Derek, and signs fluidly.

_‘Don't ever leave.’_

Derek shakes his head, confused. Stiles bounces on the balls of his feet, repeating himself.

_‘Don't ever leave.’_

Derek furrows his brows for a moment before taking a breath.

_‘I won't.’_

Stiles takes a step towards the man, closing the space between them. He rises up on his tippy toes, drapes his arms around Derek’s shoulders, and leans forward so their lips are a breath apart. Derek opens his mouth to speak, but Stiles doesn’t give him the chance because suddenly, he’s surging forward and he kisses Derek.

Their lips move together in an unchoreographed tango, and Stiles has never felt more _safe_ than when Derek’s hands settle on his hips and tug him closer.

He kisses Derek in the middle of the parking lot as the party continues inside the police station. Stiles stays there with him, in the middle of a rainstorm since it doesn’t snow in California, his breath stolen and given back in such a way that leaves him astounded, amazed, and undoubtedly alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this. When I first posted it, I was like, maybe sixteen years old, and I thought I was THE SHIT at writing. Seriously, I thought I was so good, I didn't listen to anyone as they left me encouraging comments or suggested edits. 
> 
> It's been a while since I've written anything, and though it was hard to delete this fic at first, I'm really glad I did. Because now, with the help of everyone who was kind enough to leave suggestions, I helped this story morph into something better. Something worth reading. 
> 
> So thank you, again, for reading this. And, as always, comments and edit suggestions are always welcome. 
> 
> My tumblr, if you want to keep up with me: pinklizzards


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